The Contributory Revolution

4The Contributory Metamorphosis of Technical Progress

4.1. Introduction

Much has already been written about technological progress and its interactions with human societies, from Aristotle to Heidegger, from Husserl, Hegel and Marx to Ellul. Is there more to be said? Certainly not. However, I would like here to try to give an overview and to draw some useful concepts for the argument of the chapter, and to show that we are also going through a change in the way in which technological progress makes sense in our societies. We will use technical progress in the broadest sense, in the Heideggerian sense, i.e. both science and technology, which have always been intertwined and inseparable, and are even more so today, as well as technical society, which has never ceased to rationalize its socio-organizational functioning since the settling down of hunter-gatherers.

Here, I would like to introduce a notion that I will use throughout the rest of the chapter; the notion of the “technical intensity of a human society”. It is more intuitive than objective. However, it is clear what it can mean. Modern societies have a different technical intensity depending on whether one is in Africa or in France, for example. This magnitude would characterize the weight of technology in its broadest sense in all human activities. Economists have tried to characterize the technological intensity of companies in an approach essentially centered on “business” performance or productivity. The aim is to ...