Media, Information and Technoculture 2500A/B Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: Jacques Ellul, Escherichia Coli, Food Regimes
20 Apr 2017
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Document Summary
On farms today, everything has to work better than ever. Integral to the system of food production: making our food safer but also not safer, corporate executives are trying to poison us in order to increase the means of food production. In the name of rationality and efficiency: technique integrates the machines into society. Nothing else matters, especially human feelings, when undertaking such a project: self augmenting, since its growth is automatic. After all, the technical approach to solving the world"s problems is to create technical solutions. But these solutions create more technical problems requiring technical solutions. This kind of one- track thinking is also the reason why technique is self-directing. In other words, you cannot disassociate the good uses of technique from the bad. Once the technical orientation has been adapted, an automatic cycle begins that brings into existence all aspects of technique. You cannot accept some aspects and reject others.
