Book. ” You can not stop progress “, goes the saying. But what progress are we talking about? Since the expression became popular in the 19e century with the arrival of the first cars, it refers to a powerful imagination: technological innovation would be inevitable and could alone guarantee us abundance and emancipation, far from the shortages of the past.
But this representation is now undermined by ecological crises. Technologies not long ago considered true totems of progress – the internal combustion engine, disposable plastic or chemical pesticides – are today considered harmful and gradually banned.
Is technological progress always desirable? The work of François Jarrige, historian of techniques and industrialization, largely denies this idea. The collection of articles, initially published from 2012 to 2021 in The decrease – review who “stands firm in its refusal of digitization” –, retraces two hundred years of an astonishingly cyclical history, between industrial euphoria and social and environmental disenchantment, far from the image often conjured up of a linear and indefinite movement to which we would have no choice but to adapt.
Because the awareness of the dark side of our industrial societies is not new. Many people have questioned, from the beginning of the 19the century, the risk of deterioration of social relations and living environments. The author devotes a large chapter to these ” precursors » forgotten, from the English Luddites of Yorkshire, who, in 1811, revolted against the appearance of weaving machines, to the Frenchman Charles Fournier suspecting, in the early 1830s, “some ruse hidden under this jargon of progress”.
“Amish Model”
These figures emerging from the past are strangely reminiscent of others, more contemporary. The book sheds light on the ties of filiation between the “machine breakers” of the XIXe century, these workers reluctant to industrialization which deprives them of their autonomy, and the anti-GMO reapers of the 2000s, or the supporters of a moratorium on the deployment of 5G. Whether they are “defamed like gloomy ignorant barbarians”, accused of “violence”, or sent back to the archaism of “amish pattern”, they are immediately disqualified. A very convenient method, according to the author, to prevent a debate “yet necessary”and which is reminiscent of the accusations of“ecoterrorism” pronounced more recently against walkers in the mega-basin of Sainte-Soline.
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