A educação como oposição à tecnofilia

Jacques Ellul e Neil Postman frente ao sonho de fuga do mundo

Abstract

This paper sought to question the idea of technophilia by using Jacques Ellul and Neil
Postman’s perspectives, taking as the most extreme example the dream of escaping the world.
Ellul is notoriously recognized as a pessimist when it comes to advances in the phenomenon
of La Technique and also a strong critic of the proselytizer technological discourse, which we
will call below the technophile discourse. In this context, we will present education as a
possible counterargument to the tendencies of acceleration of technology in our current society,
proposing a dialogue between Ellul and Postman, who is a notorious north-american educator
and media ecologist that heavily appreciated the works of the french thinker. Moreover, we
will present one of Postman’s educational proposals as a possible antidote to the dreams of
escaping the Earth. To make such work, we will show how these dreams, especially
interplanetary space trips and virtual reality experience, are expressions of the so-called
technological bluff, to use the term chosen by Ellul in his book Le Bluff Technologique. We
will also discuss how the digitalization of the everyday world might mean the formation of a
new milieu of human history, taking as our main reference an article by professor Kevin
Garrison, who discusses Ellul’s theory of the three milieus: natural, social and technical. Does
the virtual milieu represent a new phase in human history from this perspective? Above all, we
want to present education as a necessary counterpoint to these accelerationist tendencies that
predominate in our current technical society, according to Ellul, or in our technopoly, according
to Postman.