Technocratic Power and the End of the Political - By Adam Ellwanger
Adam Ellwanger Adam Ellwanger

Technocratic Power and the End of the Political - By Adam Ellwanger

A number of recent thinkers on technology have described the ways in which technological change often proceeds apace, in spite of the varied efforts that human beings have made to check its advance. This essay explores how these circumstances have undermined human agency in the political arena. Through a close analysis of the work of major critics of technology such as Langdon Winner, Jacques Ellul, Theodore Kaczynski, Lewis Mumford, and others, I demonstrate how technological change has reached a point where every major contingent of the liberal democratic political order has been neutralized in its ability to direct the course of future advances. After describing how the masses, the elites, and the experts have each been rendered powerless, I explore the implications of this situation for the practice of politics in human society.

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Voluntary Disappearances: Creative Destruction and the Remaking of Personal Identity
Adam Ellwanger Adam Ellwanger

Voluntary Disappearances: Creative Destruction and the Remaking of Personal Identity

Ever wanted to disappear completely and never be found? It's not an easy thing to do. This critical essay analyzes existing handbooks on how to accomplish your disappearance and how to build a new identity. Building on the theory of identity formation that he offered in his book Metanoia: Rhetoric, Authenticity, and the Transformation of the Self (2020),Ellwanger elaborates a new dissociative mode of personal reinvention: one that is unique to our schizophrenic age.

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