Most well known as a 1970s social critic of the technologies of schooling, development, and health, Ivan Illich (1926–2002) was born in Vienna, Austria, on September 4, and died in Bremen, Germany, on December 2. In the 1980s Illich shifted from social criticism to cultural archeology, that is, an effort to expose modern certainties or assumptions, in order to provide an ethical perspective on the ways technology has transformed human experience in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries.

Early Years and the Centro Intercultural De Documentación

Illich was born in Vienna, of French and Serbo-Croatian descent. During World War II he was in some danger because of the Jewish heritage on his mother's side. After the war he undertook studies in science, philosophy, theology, and history; was ordained a Catholic priest; and in the 1950s was posted to the United States, where he became a protég...