SOCIAL CONSEQUENCES OF MODERN TECHNOLOGY: GO ONLINE OR DECLINE! HERBERT MARCUSE AND THE CRITIQUE OF THE IDEOLOGY OF TECHNOLOGICAL PROGRESS.

The advancing ‘digital age’ permeates and influences our lives: work, education, culture, memory, and science. The relationship between humans, nature, and technology is being reshaped, but remains uncertain for the future. The development and dominance of modern technologies are affecting people's social experiences and relationships and the development of political systems in different countries around the world. Are digital developments producing new mechanisms of domination and new social control, or are they supporting the autonomy and emancipation of individuals? Is it a new kind of one-dimensionality without alternative? These questions were discussed: using the analyses of critical theory, particularly the theses of Herbert Marcuse. Central in Marcuse's analysis is the thesis of an intrinsic connection between technological progress and growing control. Marcuse wrote as early as 1964 that technology serves ‘to introduce new, more effective and more pleasant forms of social control and social cohesion.’ (Marcuse 1964. xiv). However, according to Marcuse, this turns technology itself into ideology. Technology is not a neutral instrument but rather transforms itself into a system of domination: ‘technological rationality’ has become ‘political rationality’ (Marcuse 1964. xvi.). In this sense, the consequences of the digital age (‘Dataism’, PEJ) can be interpreted as the modern continuation of Marcuse's thinking. The dominance of new technologies accelerates processes of social reproduction and transformation and shapes the possibilities for political action.