Raoul Vaneigem’s entire The Revolution of Everyday Life (1967) is online for free! Now I guess I’ll have to get around to reading it:
“The belief in the magical power of technology goes hand in hand with its opposite, the movement of disenchantment. The machine is the model of the intelligible. There is no mystery, nothing obscure in its drive-belts, cogs and gears; it can all be explained perfectly. But the machine is also the miracle that is to transport man into the realms of happiness and freedom. Besides, this ambiguity is useful to its masters: the old con about happy tomorrows and the green grass over the hill operates at various levels to justify the rational exploitation of men today. Thus it is not the logic of disenchantment that shakes people’s faith in progress so much as the inhuman use of technical potential, the way that its mystical justification begins to grate.” (from Chapter 9)
