The Perfection of Technology

Book excerpt: Never has the cold, ruthlessness of the systematized, technological society been subjected to such a profound, penetrating critique as the one which Friedrich Georg Juenger (1898-1977) presents in this book?now for the first time published in English in the author?s final edition (the fourth German edition) and under its correct title. And many would claim this book?s central thesis and attendant insights, all deeply rooted in Juenger?s personal synthesis of the best traditions of European humanism, have never been refuted.?We will start from an observation which no one who has ever made it can forget,? writes Juenger. ?Is there not a direct connection between the increase in knowledge concerning mechanically exact processes, and the fact that modern man, in a strange manner, loses his individuality, loses his balance, his grip upon life, feels increasingly endangered and susceptible to attack...??When it was first published in Germany in 1946 and in the United States in 1949 (as "The Failure of Technology: Perfection Without Purpose"), this unsettling book confronted readers with this challenging question and others stemming from it?all of them more relevant in our age of computers and biotechnology than they were then. No one has probed as deeply as Juenger into the reasons that the instruments promised to bring ever greater freedom to man threaten to become the means of his economic, political, and social servitude. Topics include: the delusion of the saving of labor; the pillaging of the earth by industry; the invasion of life by the automaton; technology?s attack upon law and property; the profound difference between technical training and education; how and why technology usurps the state; the mechanical sterility of modern sports; and the unsettling coincidence of the rise of the industrial masses and the advent of imperialism.