"The Cold War world, just as much as our own, was a world fundamentally shaped by technology. Technology's promise included the automation of work, the possibility of abundance, the discovery of new cures for diseases, and the extension of life. These more hopeful claims sat alongside technological fears of the apocalyptic madness of the atom bomb, the dehumanizing effects of machine dominance, or the intrusion of mass media into every corner of the individual's life."
"A major group of political theorists in the Cold War period rejected the neutrality thesis, instead asserting that the character of modern technology was essentially totalitarian. These thinkers, including Hannah Arendt, Jacques Ellul, Theodor Adorno, Herbert Marcuse, Hans Jonas, Max Horkheimer, Lewis Mumford, Martin Heidegger, and Günther Anders, were radical sceptics of twentieth-century technology. It was a precondition for totalitarianism (enabling tools of propaganda, the control of persons, and the organisation of genocide),"
The Cold War world was fundamentally shaped by technology, promising automation, abundance, medical advances, and life extension while provoking fears of nuclear apocalypse, dehumanizing machine dominance, and mass-media intrusion into individual life. A significant group of political theorists rejected the neutrality thesis and portrayed modern technology as possessing totalitarian characteristics. They identified technology as a precondition for totalitarian rule by enabling propaganda, the control of persons, and the organisation of genocide, and they described technology as totalitarian in an intrinsic sense. Marcuse held that technological neutrality could no longer be maintained, raising questions about the nature of technological totalitarianism.
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