It is to be graceful. Since technology has created this new environment, all social phenomena happen within it. This is a completely new situation in relation to all other previous historical situations. One then should not speak, for instance, of politics as influenced by technology. Politics are happening within a society that has become technological by its very own nature.
Technology is the overall reality within which politics occur.
The same is true of all aspects of modern culture. Ellul does not disagree with the assertion that only technology can solve the problems created by it. Obviously, we can better survive nowadays with the solutions which technology may find. But this is not the issue. In relation to the first question, Ellul considers, with many other philosophers that, at least up until now, man has been unable to control this universe of means that he himself created.