Technological rationality functions as political rationality in industrial society

Evidence

As the project unfolds, it shapes the entire universe of discourse and action, intellectual and material culture. In the medium of technology, culture, politics, and the economy merge into an omnipresent system which swallows up or repulses all alternatives. The productivity and growth potential of this system stabilize the society and contain technical progress within the framework of domination. Technological rationality has become political rationality. — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, 100

Categorization

• DEFINE: Core one-dimensionality concept — culture, politics, economy merging into a system that repulses alternatives; technological rationality becoming political.
• XREF: The merger of culture/politics/economy maps onto the reader’s question of how consumption functions as control in the attention economy. — connects to: Technological rationality erodes individual critical reason and produces mechanical conformity — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the…, 23; Capitalism governs through a technological rationality so pervasive that it no longer needs ideology — Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalism’s…, 228; Scientific-technological ordering is inherently political — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the…, 618 (+7 more)

Broader Connections

• Technical rationality makes irrational social control appear reasonable and rational #corroborates (0.90) — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, 124
• Technological rationality erodes individual critical reason and produces mechanical conformity #expands (0.85) — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, 23
• Scientific-technological ordering is inherently political #corroborates (0.85) — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, 618
• Capitalism governs through a technological rationality so pervasive that it no longer needs ideology #corroborates (0.80) — Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos, 228
• Technological rationality neutralizes guilt and conscience under reification #expands (0.80) — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, 346
• Technological rule substitutes causality for choice and effaces the Other #expands (0.80) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 623
• The digital economy functions as legitimating hegemonic ideology for capitalism #exemplifies (0.75) — Nick Srnicek, Platform Capitalism, 16
• Socializing production without breaking technological domination yields authoritarianism #complicates (0.70) — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination, 493
• Technological progress legitimates capitalism as the best possible system #expands (0.70) — Clara E. Mattei, Escape from Capitalism, 122