Benjamin framed technology as either mass salvation or catastrophic regression

Evidence

Benjamin was attempting to use references to the methods of expanded consciousness such as those offered by Klages and Aragon, which were anti-intellectual and unconcerned with historical and social reality, along with Proust’s literature of mémoire involontaire, and his own experiences with drugs, to deal with urgent present-day problems. He saw the core of theseand this was his other central idea, which he first formulated at length at the end of One-Way Streetas follows: either technology would become, in the hands of the masses, a sober instrument of euphoric cosmic experience, or even more horrific catastrophes than the First World War would follow. It was precisely the effort to take up what was bad in technological innovation, Benjamin was convinced, which deepened one’s insight both into prehistoric terrors, which had continued up till the present, and into the constructive tendencies in the recent past which offered a means of liquidating the forces of magic. Either technology would become the means of salvation, or there would be no salvation. Either it could be made to serve in the liquidation of the forces of magic, or there would be no liberation from those forces. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 826

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the later Adorno/Horkheimer dialectic of enlightenment — technology as both liberation and regression. — connects to: Benjamin blamed positivism for a defective reception of nineteenth-century technology — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 827; Benjamin’s seemingly eccentric concepts about technology and mass media pinpointed the era’s central problems. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 895; Benjamin hoped masses would trade auratic art for disposable entertainment aware of technology — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 852 (+3 more)
• DEFINE: Clarifies Benjamin’s central either/or thesis on technology: sober instrument of euphoric cosmic experience versus catastrophe.

Broader Connections

• Benjamin hoped masses would trade auratic art for disposable entertainment aware of technology #exemplifies (0.85) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 852
• Heidegger characterized technology’s danger as ontological rather than merely catastrophic #qualifies (0.85) — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 584
• Benjamin blamed positivism for a defective reception of nineteenth-century technology #qualifies (0.82) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 827
• Benjamin’s seemingly eccentric concepts about technology and mass media pinpointed the era’s central problems. #corroborates (0.80) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 895
• Positivists mistook technology’s social regression for scientific progress #contradicts (0.75) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 827
• Modern fears now center on runaway technology rather than genocide #complicates (0.72) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 622