Ursula Franklin - Technological Society

Technological Society

For Ursula Franklin, technology is a set of practices in the "here and now" rather than an array of machines or gadgets. It is also a comprehensive system. "Technology involves organization, procedures, symbols, new words, equations, and, most of all, a mindset." Her definition is similar to the French thinker Jacques Ellul's concept of technique. Like Ellul, Franklin asserts that technological methods dominate the modern world. "Technology has built the house in which we all live," she writes, "today there is hardly any human activity that does not occur within this house." As such, technology is a central element of the here and now. "In the broadest sense of the term, the here and now is our environment, that is, all that is around us—the ever-changing overlay of nature, the built environment, the institutional and social structures within which human activities take place, as well as the activities themselves—'the way things are done around here.'" Franklin sees her studies of technology as an attempt to understand how technological practices affect the advancement of justice and peace.