Nicola Bulley and the Technological Society

Public response reveals a lot about our relationships with technology and nature

Overwhelming sadness—this was my persistent feeling during the search for Nicola Bulley.

For readers who don’t know the story: on the morning of the 27th of January, 45 year-old Nicola Bulley went missing whilst walking her dog along a quiet, nondescript bank of the River Wyre in Lancashire. She had just dropped her two daughters at school. The police hypothesis from early on was that there was no third-party involvement, and that Nicola had somehow fallen into the river. 

The disappearance swiftly became a national story. There was a massive police search involving helicopters, sniffer dogs, and drones, and eventually a specialist diving team who searched as far as the sea, 12 miles away. Yet for 3 weeks, there was nothing. Then, despite all this police effort, Nicola’s body was eventually found on the 19th of February by dog walkers, less than a mile from where she had last been seen.

These are just the facts. The “whole story” became something rather different, and a review of the case has now been ordered by the police. The area of the disappearance became dogged by amateur TikTok sleuths, convinced of foul play and police incompetence; the police releasing information about Nicola’s alcohol problems was met with outrage. The whole thing was a mess.

Perhaps the most remarkable moment, however, was when they searched the river. A diving team from Specialist Group International (SGI), led by Peter Faulding—regarded as a leading expert in the field—searched the river with sonar equipment. They were volunteers, and had not been drafted in by the police. They searched for three days and, by the 8th of February, had categorically concluded that Nicola was not in the river.

The eventual discovery of Nicola’s body among the reeds, however, so near to where she disappeared, has brought huge criticism onto Faulding. Faulding and SGI maintain that their expertise is not in doubt: Nicola was not found on the riverbed, but in the reeds—an area outside their remit. 

However, SGI have been suspended from the National Crime Agency’s list of experts, pending a review. Faulding’s apparently uncompromising approach to his own expertise has been brought into the spotlight. Others, however, are saying that Faulding has become a scapegoat.

We Just Don’t Know

At this stage, any sensible person should maintain this with regard to any potential flaws in the search for Nicola Bulley: we just don’t know what went on.

It may be that serious errors are found in the police process. It may be that flaws in Faulding and SGI’s approach are exposed. We just don’t know yet.

As I said at the start: my main feeling following this story has just been overwhelming sadness. Having kids has ruined me for life on this sort of stuff. Her poor, poor children. I prayed during the search, and pray again now: Lord, have mercy.

The Public Response

Yet I think that there is a major element of our public response to the discovery of Nicola Bulley’s body that has gone uncommented on—something worthy of discussion, and which should prompt us all to deeper reflection.

What is of interest to me is this: the assumption that the failure to find Nicola Bulley’s body must be down to human incompetence or error.

This, it seems to me, is what animates the widespread public suspicion of the police and Peter Faulding.

Again, the reviews could expose culpable incompetence and error—we don’t know yet. But the overriding assumption of public feeling seems to be that such things must be to blame. One can already imagine that, even if the reviews resolves the police and SGI of any fault, there will be plenty of people who refuse to accept the findings.

So: why do we feel this way?

I think it’s because we assume that the technology at our disposal means we should have found her body sooner.

If Nicola fell into the river, how could her body only turn up three weeks later just a mile from where she was last seen? After all, didn’t we have the technology to have found her sooner? Not just the divers and their sonar, but drones, helicopters, and more.

We are also baffled because of the kind of place in which Nicola went missing. She was not swept out into the wild and windy North Sea; she didn’t even fall off a bridge in London into the swelling Thames. No, she was walking her dog along in semi-rural Lancashire. It seems an impossible place for someone to be drowned and lost, whether by accident or by taking their own life—so small, so unimpressive, so English. It barely seems like the kind of thing we’d call “nature.” In the Book of Job, God speaks of wild, terrible parts of the created world far beyond Job’s control or comprehension: “Have you entered into the springs of the sea, or walked in the recesses of the deep?” (Job 38:16). We cannot imagine God saying the same about a stretch of the River Wyre where people walk their dogs. No, such places seem to us as if they should be well within the grasp of human ingenuity.

England, 2023: A Technological Society

Here in 2023, we take for granted the presence of technology which yields the results it was designed for. It’s simply “the way things are.”

But perfectly result-yielding technology is not “the way things are.” This is an illusion. To think this way is not an accurate reflection of reality as it is, but a projection onto reality of how we wish it to be.

Such a view of of the world—and it is a strange and novel one—makes us “a technological society.” Some readers will know The Technological Society as the title of a 1954 book by the French Christian philosopher Jacques Ellul. If you’re not familiar with Ellul, then the below picture will confirm that he looked exactly as one would imagine a 1950s French philosopher to look.

What did Ellul mean (as early as 1954) when he said we modern folk live in “a technological society”? To quote another Christian writer, he meant this:

“[W]hat marks [a technological culture] out most importantly, is not anything that it does, but what it thinks. It is not “technological” because its instruments of making are extraordinarily sophisticated (though that is evidently the case), but because it thinks of everything it does as a form of instrumental making.”

We are a technological society, then, because of how we see the world. Our whole relationship to the world around us—to what we call “nature”, but also to other people, politics, social problems etc.—is viewed through the lens of what Ellul calls “technique”. Now, note here, Ellul’s definition of “technique” is a precise one. He doesn’t just mean “being good at things”. He says:

The term technique, as I use it, does not mean machines, technology, or this or that procedure for attaining an end. In our technological society, technique is the totality of methods rationally arrived at and having absolute efficiency (for a given stage of development) in every field of human activity.

“The totality of methods rationally arrived at and having absolute efficiency (for a given stage of development) in every field of activity.” Let’s break that down into some more digestible terms:

• “Totality of methods”: technique is not just about one particular strain of expertise, but many different disciplines coming together to “cover all the bases”

• “rationally arrived at”: technique has been achieved through a process which should, in theory, leave no room for error

• “absolute efficiency”: technique should yield 100% results

• “for a given stage of development”: we maintain an awareness that technology can improve and so may be better than what we currently have; yet what we currently have should always reach the standards we expect of it

• “in every field of activity”: there is no area of life to which technique cannot be effectively applied

Those more expert in Ellul than I will, I’m sure, have sharper ways of putting things than that, but I think these are some workable paraphrases.

The public outrage at the police’s inability to find Nicola Bulley’s body is something which could only ferment in a technological society—a society which views all things through the lens of“technique”. Consider it in Ellul’s terms:

• “Totality of methods”: the police search encompassed interviews, CCTV footage, drones, sniffer dogs, helicopters, divers, sonar equipment, and more

• “rationally arrived at”: all the above was carried out by experts, trained in processes ruthlessly designed to leave, as the police say, no stone unturned

• “absolute efficiency”: we expected that, once all the technological options had been applied to the case, an answer would be forthcoming. This expectation of absolute efficiency is, I think, the thing on which public feeling about the case ultimately turned, and explains why the spotlight is now on Peter Faulding and SGI, for the unacceptable “inefficiency” of their technology, which we all thought would solve the mystery

• “for a given stage of development”: whilst we can concede in the abstract that police search techniques will doubtless improve in the future, we think that, in 2023, we possess technology advanced enough to mean that Nicola should have been found much sooner

• “in every field of activity”: a small stretch of river in Lancashire should not be able to frustrate our technology; it seems entirely tameable to us

The Recesses of the Deep

Now, I stress again: we don’t know what the coming reports about the case will show.

We do not yet know if Nicola’s death was an accident or if she took her own life—and we may never know. Foul pay may still be unearthed. It may emerge that our technology should and could have located her body sooner, and that human incompetence or error is in fact to blame. We don’t know.

But public opinion, as it stands, sits firmly in disbelief—disbelief that, in 2023, a small patch of English river could frustrate the best of our technology, only turning up a body 3 weeks later.

Life in a technological society blinds us to the realities of the natural world. The River Wyre is certainly not the Amazon—certainly not the point at which Nicola Bulley seems to have gone into it. But local anglers have said publicly that that stretch of water reaches up to 15 feet deep. It is not a stretch of river I would want to fall into. Our technological society obscures the fact that, even along our dog-walking routes, we pass through a creation which simply will not yield to technique.

We should think of the Lord’s question to Job again: have you walked the recesses of the deep? 

Can you say for sure how a tragic lost body would fare within the currents, whirls, and eddies of the River Wyre over the course of three weeks? No, I can’t, we answer—but surely someone can? Aren’t there experts, Out There Somewhere? River People? There certainly are—but a good expert of the natural world will be the first to admit that even their great experise cannot plumb all the depths of land, sea, or sky.

Technique runs deep in all of us—and it is deadly. Through it, we enter into a warped relationship with the world, one in which we feel the world must bend to us. But the world will never bend so.

Technique makes us unable to face the fact that, sometimes, a tragedy is just that: tragic, and utterly so. Sometimes there is no one to blame. There are no processes that can be refined, no technology that can be improved, no Best Practice to be reevaluated. There is just tragedy.

When the world is unyielding, or when it throws out tragedy unscripted, those who have absorbed the myth of technique will respond either with rage or by doubling down on technique, insisting that the world must submit to the strength of human will and the skill of human making.

Technique sadly often runs just as deep in us Christians as it does in the rest of the world. Those of us who should be echoing the Lord’s questions to Job—“Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?”—instead join in asking the world’s questions: “how could this happen in 2023?” 

Once more: we don’t know what has yet come out about thie story. But for now, in the absence of anything else, the British public have taken refuge in the myth of technique. 

And yet technique is no refuge at all. All it does is make you angry. If we could let go of technique, we would be free to sit in the only appropriate response to the tragedy of Nicola Bulley: overwhelming sadness. 

*Image Credit: Flickr