Technological surplus labor is mythologized as the model for thought, stultifying it

Evidence

Interested parties explain the culture industry in technological terms. It is alleged that because millions participate in it, certain reproduction processes are necessary that inevitably require identical needs in innumerable places to be satisfied with identical goods. The technical contrast between the few production centers and the large number of widely dispersed consumption points is said to demand organization and planning by management. Furthermore, it is claimed that standards were based in the first place on consumers’ needs, and for that reason were accepted with so little resistance. The result is the circle of manipulation and retroactive need in which the unity of the system grows ever stronger. No mention is made of the fact that the basis on which technology acquires power over society is the power of those whose economic hold over society is greatest. A technological rationale is the rationale of domination itself. — Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 94 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Individual rationality, he claims, was won in the struggle against regnant superstitions, irrationality, and domination, and posed the individual in a critical stance against society. Critical reason was thus a creative principle which was the source of both the individual’s liberation and society’s advancement. The development of modern industry and technological rationality, however, undermined the basis of individual rationality. As capitalism and technology developed, advanced industrial society demanded increasing accommodation to the economic and social apparatus and submission to increasing domination and administration. Hence, a “mechanics of conformity” spread throughout the society. The efficiency and power of administration overwhelmed the individual, who gradually lost the earlier traits of critical rationality (i.e., autonomy, dissent, the power of negation), thus producing a “one-dimensional society” and “one-dimensional man.” — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, 23 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

MECHANIZATION has emphasized complexity and confusion; it has been responsible for monopolies in the field of knowledge; and it becomes extremely important to any civilization, if it is not to succumb to the influence of this monopoly of knowledge, to make some critical survey and report. The conditions of freedom of thought are in danger of being destroyed by science, technology, and the mechaniza- tion of knowledge, and with them, Western civilization. — Harold Innis, The Bias of Communication, 1123 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Mechanized knowledge creates monopolies that endanger freedom of thought — Harold Innis, The Bias of Communication, 1123; Technological rationality erodes individual critical reason and produces mechanical conformity — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the…, 23; Mass culture’s technical rationality masks class domination as consumer demand. — Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 94 (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• Mass culture’s technical rationality masks class domination as consumer demand. #corroborates (0.85) — Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 94
• Technological rationality erodes individual critical reason and produces mechanical conformity #corroborates (0.78) — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, 23
• Mechanized knowledge creates monopolies that endanger freedom of thought #expands (0.72) — Harold Innis, The Bias of Communication, 1123