Communion with Babylon: Alienation, Sacralization, and Hope in Ellul's Technological Society.

The globalizing potential of digital communication technology evokes frequent comparisons, both hopeful and foreboding, to the Judeo-Christian story of the tower of Babel. Under the guiding metaphor of Babel, this paper integrates the sociological and theological dimensions of Jacques Ellul's scholarship in an attempt to better understand the profound implications of la technique. To Ellul, the Tower of Babel represents the alienation and sacralization characteristic of the technological society. Yet the metaphor also provides a ray of hope for human flourishing, leveraging media ecology in the service of interpersonal communication while responding to the totalizing demands of the digital age. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]