The most serious analyst of the danger of technical determinism is still Jacques Ellul. As far back as 1965 this French philosopher, lawyer, and social prophet argued that “The technical phenomenon has assumed an independent character quite apart from economic considerations, and that it develops according to its own intrinsic laws…, following its own intrinsic causal processes, independent of external forces or human aims.“

Frequent accusations to the contrary notwithstanding, Ellul replied that he “never intended to describe any inexorable process of inevitable doom.” In fact he insists “that if we can be sufficiently awakened to the real gravity of the situation, man has within himself the necessary resources to discover, by some means unforeseeable at present, the path to a new freedom.“