Technocratic Power and the Death of the Political

A number of recent thinkers on technology have described the ways in which technological change often proceeds apace, in spite of the varied efforts that human beings have made to check its advance. This essay explores how these circumstances have undermined human agency in the political arena. Through a close analysis of the work of major critics of technology such as Langdon Winner, Jacques Ellul, Theodore Kaczynski, Lewis Mumford, and others, I demonstrate how technological change has reached a point where every major contingent of the liberal democratic political order has been neutralized in its ability to direct the course of future advances. After describing how the masses, the elites, and the experts have each been rendered powerless, I explore the implications of this situation for the practice of politics in human society.