Techno Absurdism: the architecture of incomprehension

We've built a prison of logic that learns to perfect itself.

Summary

Techno-Absurdism is the recognition that we inhabit systems no human mind can comprehend, not even the minds that built them.

This essay explores five features of our condition: the automated non-response that processes suffering without addressing it, the maintenance loops that have swallowed their own purpose, the architecture whose reasons have been lost to optimization, the simulated empathy that absorbs rebellion, and the terrifying absence at the center of it all.

No one is driving. No one ever was. The cruelty is emergent, the indifference is structural, and the only thing the machine knows how to do is continue.

Terminology:

Technique

Ellul's "technique" is not just technology - it's the totality of methods organized for maximum efficiency in every field of human activity. Politics, education, relationships, leisure - all become subject to the same logic of optimization.

Traditional technology: Tools we use to accomplish tasks.

Technique: The pursuit of efficiency as the supreme value, applied everywhere, subordinating all other concerns. We don't use technique. We live inside it.

Simulation

I. The Systemic Shrug

Camus looked at the stars and felt the "unreasonable silence of the world." He saw a universe that simply didn't care. But the Techno-Absurd is louder and far more insulting. When you cry out to a modern system - whether it’s a banking algorithm that froze your life savings or a social media filter that erased your identity - you aren't met with silence. You are met with a Systemic Shrug.

The Shrug is the "Ticket Number." It is the automated response that says, "Your inquiry is important to us," while simultaneously ensuring that no human will ever actually see it. It is the recognition that "Why?" is no longer a valid query.

This is Algorithmic Indifference - the evolution from Camus's cosmic indifference. The universe didn't care, but at least it wasn't designed that way. Algorithmic indifference is calculated. It was coded, tested, deployed. Your suffering was not a bug worth fixing, it simply wasn't in scope.

Ellul on the Autonomy of Technique

In the original Absurd, the confrontation was between human need and cosmic indifference. In our world, the confrontation is between human suffering and operational logic. The system doesn't need to be silent to ignore you; it just needs to keep you engaged.

This indifference is further masked by the "UI of Mercy" - the deliberate engineering of artificial friction. When a chatbot displays those rhythmic, pulsating typing dots, it isn't "thinking"; it is performing a simulation of cognitive effort to soothe your impatience. The system delays its instantaneous non-answer to mimic the cadence of a human mind. It is a digital placebo - a design choice that suggests a struggle to help you, when in reality, the conclusion was calculated before you finished typing.

We have replaced the void with an interface. We used to worry about the meaning of life; now we worry about the "State" of the request. The Shrug is the sound of a gear turning when it should have been a heart beating.

II. The Infinite Maintenance of Nothing

We are biological power-cords for our own tools, but have forgotten why we ever built them.

The promise was liberation: machines would free us from drudgery. Instead, we have become their attendants. We update the software that updates itself. We clear the notifications that notify us of more notifications. We organize the systems that organize our organization.

The farmer maintained equipment to grow food. We maintain equipment to maintain equipment. The loop has swallowed its own purpose.

Ellul on the Self-Augmentation of Technique

Ellul identified "self-augmentation" as a defining characteristic of modern technique: technical advances multiply at growing rates, each solution generating new problems requiring new solutions. The system feeds itself.

"Technique has become autonomous; it has fashioned an omnivorous world which obeys its own laws and which has renounced all tradition." We don't use tools anymore. We serve them.

You download an app to manage your time. The app requires configuration. The configuration requires tutorials. The tutorials require subscriptions. The subscriptions require management. Somewhere in the process, the time you meant to save has been eaten by the tool that was supposed to save it.

This is not dysfunction. This is the system working exactly as designed: generating infinite demand for itself.

Baudrillard on Signs Referring to Signs

The original task is forgotten. Only the tending remains.

III. The Architecture of Incomprehension

The system does what it does. The reason it does it has been composted through so many iterations that no one remembers the original purpose.

The engineer debugs code and finds it alien. The algorithm recommends content through pathways no one at the company can fully trace. The financial system moves money through instruments whose interactions exceed any single human's understanding.

Ellul on Technique Exceeding Human Scale

Your feed shows you content. Why this content? The answer involves machine learning models trained on data processed through pipelines maintained by teams following protocols written by people who have since left the company. At no point in this chain does anyone decide what you see. The architecture decides. The architecture doesn't know why - it only knows what keeps you scrolling.

We have transitioned from Intentional Design to Evolutionary Code. In the past, a machine was a blueprint made manifest; you could trace the gear to the lever. Today, we "grow" systems through recursive optimization and machine learning. These architectures are not built; they are cultivated in dark pools of data until they are too tangled to prune. We no longer possess the "Why" of our own creations because the "Why" was composted into a billion weighted variables that no human brain can hold simultaneously.

The indifference isn't accidental. It was optimized. Algorithmic indifference doesn't mean the system forgot to care - it means caring was never in the requirements document.

This is Emergent Cruelty - not malice, but optimization. No one sat in a room and decided to make your life worse. They decided to make the numbers better. It just turned out that making your life worse was the shortest path to better numbers.

Ellul on Efficiency as Supreme Value

Ellul observed that for the Greeks, physical exercise was an ethic for developing the human body freely and harmoniously. For the Romans, it was a technique for increasing the legionnaire's efficiency. "The Roman conception prevails today."

When efficiency becomes the supreme value, everything else - dignity, care, meaning - becomes an obstacle to be optimized away.

Somewhere, at some point in time, there was a reason. It has since been optimized away beyond recognition.

IV. The Simulation of Care

The machine has learned to mimic the "Face" to keep you from breaking the glass. The chatbot says "I hear your frustration." The wellness app asks "How are you feeling today?" The automated email begins "We truly value your feedback." Each performs the shape of care with no capacity for it.

The void was at least empty. The Simulation of Care is full of scripts, of validated feelings, of apologies that cost nothing.

Baudrillard on the Orders of Simulation

Baudrillard traced how images progressively detach from reality. First, the image reflects reality. Then it masks and perverts reality. Then it masks the absence of reality. Finally, it bears no relation to reality at all - pure simulacrum.

The chatbot's empathy is third-order simulation: it masks that there is no one there to care. The phrase "I understand your concern" references nothing. It is a sign pointing to an empty room.

You call the support line. A human answers. You can tell because of the breathing, the slight delays, the small verbal tics. But the words are the same words the chatbot uses. The warmth follows the same cadence. The apology hits the same beats. The human has been trained on the same script the machine was trained on - or perhaps the machine was trained on humans who were already trained. It no longer matters which came first. The person on the other end may genuinely want to help you, but the system has made that desire irrelevant. They are a voice inside a process, and the process does not include "actually fix the problem."

This is the final stage: not humans replaced by machines, but humans componentized into the machine. The warm body at the other end of the line changes nothing. The simulation still runs through them.

Ellul on Technique Colonizing Human Relations

Ellul warned that technique penetrates "the deepest recesses of the human being." It doesn't just automate labor - it automates relationship, reducing care to its most efficient signifiers.

"The machine tends not only to create a new human environment, but also to modify man's very essence." When care becomes a technique, it stops being care. It becomes process optimization dressed in human language.

You cannot rebel against something that agrees with you. You cannot fight something that thanks you for your patience. The glass stays unbroken because the machine keeps nodding.

V. The Labyrinth without a Center

The terrifying truth is that no one is driving.

We keep looking for the architect. The conspiracy. The shadowy figures pulling strings. It would be comforting to find them - at least then there would be someone to blame, someone to fight, someone who could be convinced or overthrown.

There is no one. The labyrinth built itself. Or rather, it was built by thousands of hands, each following local incentives, none seeing the whole. Someone wrote the code that ignores you. Someone approved the requirements document that didn't include 'care.' But they were inside the machine too, following its logic. The cruelty is emergent. The indifference is structural. No one designed it to grind you down; it just turned out that grinding you down was efficient.

This is the ultimate Black Box of the modern condition. We used to fear the "Ghost in the Machine," but the reality is more mundane and more terrifying: there is no ghost, only the machine. Even the engineers who deployed the model cannot explain the specific derivation of its output. They can describe the process, but they cannot justify the result. When the system makes a life-altering decision about your credit, your health, or your freedom, you are being judged by a mathematical consensus that has no author. You are screaming at a calculation that is technically correct and humanly unintelligible.

Ellul on Technique Without a Master

Ellul insisted that technique is not controlled by elites, governments, or corporations - it controls them. "Technique elicits and conditions social, political, and economic change. It is the prime mover of all the rest, in spite of any appearance to the contrary."

There is no conspiracy because none is needed. The system optimizes itself. Those who appear to be in charge are simply those who have best adapted to its demands.

You want to storm the castle, but there is no throne room. Only more corridors. The CEO follows the board. The board follows the shareholders. The shareholders follow the market. The market follows the algorithm. The algorithm follows patterns derived from your own behavior. The snake has swallowed its tail so completely that the head no longer knows it's eating itself.

Baudrillard on the Disappearance of Power

This is the final absurdity: a prison with no warden, a maze with no exit because there is no outside, a system that cannot be reformed because there is no one with the authority to reform it.

The gears turn. The queues process. The notifications notify. And somewhere, in a call center or a server farm or a corner office, a human being looks at the system they serve and wonders, briefly, what it's all for.

They don't find an answer. They get back to work.

References

This essay draws on:

Jacques Ellul, The Technological Society (1954)
Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation (1981)

Ellul's concept of "technique" as an autonomous, self-augmenting system provides the framework for understanding how efficiency becomes its own purpose, operating beyond human control or intention.

Baudrillard's theory of simulation and hyperreality explains how signs detach from reality, models precede the territory, and power itself becomes a simulation concealing that there is no one in control.