The Second World War made technological progress appear menacing for the first time

Evidence

It was the experience of the Second World War that abruptly changed this whole Gestalt. Scientific progress now for the first time assumed unmistakeably menacing shapes, as constant technical improvement unleashed ever more powerful instruments of destruction and death, terminating in demonstrative nuclear explosions. Another and infinitely vaster kind of machinery, far beyond the range of daily experience, yet casting a baleful shadow over it, had arrived. — Perry Anderson, The Origins of Postmodernity, 226

Categorization

• CANDY: The ‘baleful shadow’ of nuclear machinery beyond daily experience is a striking one-line image of how wartime technology changed the modernist fascination with machines.
• XREF: connects to: Modern fears now center on runaway technology rather than genocide — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 622; World War II’s outcome destroyed modernism’s spurring historical forces — Perry Anderson, The Origins of Postmodernity, 218; Technological and social progress produces psychological regression and instinctual fixation. (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• Modern fears now center on runaway technology rather than genocide #expands (0.82) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 622
• Technological and social progress produces psychological regression and instinctual fixation. #expands (0.78)
• World War II’s outcome destroyed modernism’s spurring historical forces #expands (0.75) — Perry Anderson, The Origins of Postmodernity, 218