Word: ellul
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Indeed, the googol might be a good symbol for a time when the world is under the sway of technology, when it has no choice, as Jacques Ellul says in The Technological Society, but to "don mathematical vestments." The googol is the figure 1 followed by 100 zeros (see above). It was made famous, or infamous, in the 1930s by Mathematician Edward Kasner. He also offered the googolplex, which is 1 followed by a googol of zeros - so many zeros, said Kasner, that no matter how tiny they could not all be written on a piece of paper as wide...
...JACQUES ELLUL...
...Eating Machine Sack artfully enlarges his vision of the System as Superscapegoat for the Superstate. Basically the book consists of profiles of four Viet Nam veterans. But it is also a metaphor that has been duly certified by such thinkers as Marx, Veblen, Jacques Ellul, Lewis Mumford and Siegfried Giedion (Mechanization Takes Command). The theme is familiar, though no less enticing for having been subject to countless cliches. The oversimplified version goes like this: As technological systems grow more complex, individuals grow less responsible for controlling the consequences...
...Krishna: Indian philosopher who has written about the evolution of man toward a new state of consciousness. The Lama Foundation: a commune devoted to the study of Eastern mysticism. *Ivan Illich: brilliant priest who believes in deschooling society but founded a school of his own in Cuernavaca, Mexico. Jacques Ellul: French historian and lay theologian of a Calvinist persuasion...
Then why not abandon hope, surrender to the city, and trust in Christ's promised pardon? With stern Calvinistic orthodoxy, Ellul replies that those who do so immediately mark themselves among the unpardoned. For the Christian he suggests a subtler course: work with and in the city, but stay apart from it spiritually, disarming its lures to power and pride with the humor of an "active pessimism." But there may come a time, Ellul cautions, when life in the city "is no longer possible for the Christian." What then? Flee...