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“Ellul’s Technique, Wikinomics and the Ethical Frontier”Randy M. Ataide
Recently I came upon a video that stated “We are currently preparing kids for jobs thatdon’t exist using technologies that haven’t yet been invented in order to solve problemswe don’t even know are problems yet.” My experience as a business practitioner whorecently began a career as an educator of business students at a Christian University,allows me a good perspective from which to attempt determine any validity this caveathas. At first glance, it would seem that Ellul’s observations and prophecies of technological development are truer than ever; on the other hand might we have enteredinto an undiscovered country of technology that Ellul did not wholly anticipate?Ellul felt one way in which technique would enslave us would be in the diminution of thestudy of humanities and my early foray into discussions with business students mayconfirm Ellul’s contention. A student may complain that some general education courseinterferes with the ability to take advanced courses on money, investing or entrepreneurship. Humanities it has been said, are concerned with “the complete recordof human experience” and many students and those in the business world may seem littleconcerned with this record when the pursuit of a career awaits them.But ironically, the opposite seems to be occurring. Technology is now being used to buildcommunities that never existed before. Our progeny have been able to arrive at uses of technology that we did not recognize let alone develop or apply. While it is too soon tosay that what is emerging is some form of 
neo-technique
, some interesting trends of theuse of technology away from the tendency to dehumanize need to be brought to our attention. The ethical implications of these trends upon the field of business areenormous.From our earliest days of adolescent play we are urged by our parents to “share and sharealike.” To do so is the essence of activity in the human community as a youth, and at thatage we are in some ways a conduit freely receiving from our support structure and freelydispensing them to our peers. But in the early teenage years, this community dynamicshifts and the rise of individual possessions is dramatic and stays with us our entire lives.This culminates in few places as much as our business systems, for most cultures of anylevel of organization, regardless of the particular political system, places high value onintellectual property, proprietary information, trademark and copyright protection.Our system of business ethics therefore follows this primacy of protection of confidentialwork product. We have seen this fact play out most clearly in the battles between open-source use of film, music and other entertainment content, a conflict reminiscent of asmall Dutch boy holding back a rupturing dam. And few have considered this pendingexplosion from an ethical perspective.Open-source technology, in its many well-known forms such as Linux, flickr, MySpace,SocialText and Wikipedia, has fundamentally changed the focus of personal technologyfrom separation and exclusion, two great fears of Ellul, to collaboration and community.
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