Technology can increase human weakness even as it increases power

Evidence

Technics, as a universe of instrumentalities, may increase the weakness as well as the power of man. At the present stage, he is perhaps more powerless over his own apparatus than he ever was before. — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, 822

Categorization

• XREF: Connects directly to the attention economy / media critique in the reader’s stated purpose — the ‘apparatus’ as something we inhabit rather than control maps onto platform algorithms. — connects to: Technological and social progress produces psychological regression and instinctual fixation.; Technological development can cancel out women’s physical disadvantage relative to men — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 142; Mechanization sustains exploitation while shifting its form from muscular to mental exhaustion. — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the…, 169 (+8 more)

Broader Connections

• Technology increases rather than eliminates the need for trust #complicates (0.75) — Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power, 130
• Technological change explains oppression only when human ambition projects new demands onto it #qualifies (0.72) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 147