The awe of technology substitutes for transcendence in mass culture.

Evidence

The tremor lives off the excess power which technology as a whole, along with the capital that stands behind it, exercises over every individual thing. This is what transcendence is in mass culture. The poetic mystery of the product, in which it is more than itself, consists in the fact that it participates in the infinite nature of production and the reverential awe inspired by objectivity fits in smoothly with the schema of advertising. — Theodor W. Adorno, The Culture Industry, 110

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines what ‘transcendence’ means inside mass culture — the key mechanism to test against, say, Apple keynotes or SpaceX launches.
• DEEPTHINKING: The substitution of technological awe for religious transcendence is one of Adorno’s most robust and testable claims — works as well on 2024 rocket launches and AI demos as on 1940s Ford advertising.
• XREF: connects to: Technology’s unification of all arts will expose the identity behind industrial culture; The longing for transcendence through exalted humans predates celebrity culture — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 770; Technological mastery extinguishing nature and cultures is dominated by men by design — Val Plumwood, Feminism and the Mastery of Nature, 55 (+1 more)