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Political Dislocation in a Technical Universe

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2009

David C. Menninger
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Extract

One clear fact emerging from current public opinion polls is that most Americans have little confidence in both political leaders and the political system. At the time of this writing, the president's approval ratings have slipped to the lowest mark for any president since World War II – just above 25 percent, according to one poll. Members of Congress have hardly been faring better. Throughout 1977, even as the president's popularity began to slide down, approval ratings for Congress never went above 40 percent, ending the year at just above 30 percent. Indeed, all politicians have suffered from severely diminished status in the public eye. In one recent survey on occupational prestige, they were rated next to last among fifteen occupations listed, a step above salesmen and one below skilled workers.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Review of Politics , Volume 42 , Issue 1 , January 1980 , pp. 73 - 91
Copyright
Copyright © University of Notre Dame 1980

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References

1 NBC News/Associated Press, June 27–28, 1978, as reported in Public Opinion, July/August 1978, p. 35.

2 Public Opinion, March/April 1978, p. 30.

3 Ibid., p. 36.

4 Ibid., p. 23, and also issue of July/August, 1978 pp. 30–31.

5 Forbes, R.J., The Conquest of Nature (London, 1968), p. ixGoogle Scholar.

6 Mesthene, Emmanuel, Technological Change (Cambridge, Mass., 1970), p. viiGoogle Scholar.

7 Ellul, Jacques, The Technological Society (New York, 1964), p. 98Google Scholar.

8 The quotes come respectively from: Ferkiss, Victor, Technological Man: The Myth and the Reality (New York, 1969), p. 82Google Scholar; Cotgrove, Stephen, “Technology, Rationality and Domination,” Social Studies of Science, 5 (1975), 56CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Shorter, Edward, “Industrial Society in Trouble: Some Recent Views,” American Scholar, 40 (Spring, 1971), 336Google Scholar; Florman, Samuel C., The Existential Pleasures of Engineering (New York, 1976), chap. 6Google Scholar.

9 Aron, Raymond, Progress and Disillusion (New York, 1966), p. 266Google Scholar.

10 Ferkiss, , Technological Man, p. 205Google Scholar.

11 Heilbroner, Robert, Between Capitalism and Socialism (New York, 1970), p. 26Google Scholar.

12 Ellul, Jacques, The Political Illusion (New York, 1972), p. 206Google Scholar.

13 Mannheim, Karl, Man and Society in an Age of Reconstruction (New York, no date), pp. 240–41Google Scholar.

14 Jacques Ellul defines technical intention as “a precise view of technical possibilities, the will to attain certain ends, applications in all areas, and adherence of the whole of society to a conspicuous technical objective” (Technological Society, p. 52).

15 Mannheim, , Man and Society, p. 67Google Scholar.

16 As noted by Max Weber: “The technique of an action refers to the means employed as opposed to the meaning or end to which the action is, in the last analysis, oriented.… As long as the action is purely technical in the present sense, it is oriented only to the selection of means … and a purely technical consideration ignores other wants” (quoted in Cotgrove, , “Technology, Rationality and Domination,” pp. 58–59Google Scholar).

17 Ellul, Jacques, The Presence of the Kingdom (New York, 1967), p. 62Google Scholar.

18 In the same poll, referred to in Note 3 above, the most prestige was accorded to the most skilled professions: scientists and doctors.

19 Gerth, H. H. and Mills, C. Wright, eds., From Max Weber (New York, 1946), p. 232Google Scholar.

20 Ibid., p. 214.

21 Ibid., p. 232.

22 This definition consciously reflects the tradition of politics in those societies which today have the largest amount of technology in them: Western liberal democracies.

23 Carroll, James D., “Participatory Technology,” in Western Man and Environmental Ethics, ed. Barbour, Ian G. (Reading, Mass., 1973), p. 208Google Scholar.

24 Reagan, Michael, The New Federalism (New York, 1972), p. 3Google Scholar.

25 Ibid., p. 22.

26 Lambright, W. Henry, Governing Science and Technology (New York, 1976)Google Scholar.

27 Ibid., pp. 60, 88

28 Ibid., p. 85.

29 Ibid., p. 89.

30 Lerner, Allan W., “Experts, Politicians, and Decisionmaking in the Technological Society” (Morristown, N.J., 1971), p. 3Google Scholar.

31 Ibid.

32 Lambright, , Governing Science, p. 204Google Scholar.

33 McHale, John, The Future of the Future (New York, 1971), pp. 15–16Google Scholar.

34 Johnson, Howard W., Chairman of the MIT Corporation, quoted in Technology Review, 07/08, 1976, p. 57 (italics added)Google Scholar.

35 Politics, bk. 1, chaps. 9 and 10.

36 An excellent discussion of the connection between behaviorahsm in political science and political theory's technical fetishes is provided in Richard Ashcraft, “The Presuppositions of Contemporary Political Theory” (Paper presented at the Western Political Science Association Convention, March, 1975).

37 Bell, Daniel, ed., Toward the Year 2000: Work in Progress (Boston, 1969), p. 183Google Scholar.

38 McHale, , Future of the Future, p. 12Google Scholar.

39 Weisner, Jerome, “Has the U.S. Lost Its Initiative in Technological Innovation?” Technology Review, 07/08 1976, pp. 56Google Scholar, 58. More recently, Weisner has expressed concern about the stifling of technical research in the universities by increasingly stringent government regulations attached to federal funds for research. He sees this as contributing to the decline of the United States in high technology fields it dominated in the past, like large-scale integrated electronic circuitry lor computers. In general, as this country's economic situation continues to weaken, there are stronger demands for more investment in technical research and innovation as the means to regain stability. As President Carter's science adviser, Dr. Frank Press, put it: “The harsh truth is that we are now very much locked into a dynamic system of global economic growth, and it is one largely based on technological change and innovation” (quoted in the New York Times, 19 February 1978).

40 Interview with the author, 24 October 1973.