Jacque Ellul’s The Technological Society, originally published in 1954, has become a footnote to one of the stranger events in U.S. history. A terrorist known as the Unabomber spent almost 20 years mailing bombs to corporate leaders and scientists. After the longest and most expensive FBI investigation in history, investigators discovered that the Unabomber was a Harvard-educated mathematician named Ted Kaczynski, who lived alone in a cabin with almost no possessions except Ellul’s book.
Kaczynski called The Technological Society his Bible, but readers drawn by the allure of danger may be disappointed. Ellul’s writing is dense, his abstract arguments are recursive, and the title of the book is misleading. In fact, he added a note to the English edition clarifying that The Technological Society is not truly about technology. But it is, for readers who rediscover it today, a strikingly relevant warning that explains the past year more than any contemporary commentary. Ellul helps articulate the feeling, shared by many, that there is a crisis looming on the horizon.
