Furthermore, technology functions as an “ideological tool that mystif[ies] mechanisms of power and domination” (Best and Kellner 2000) and is “one of the major sources of public power in modern societies,” commonly used as an alibi “to justify what are in reality relations of force” (Feenberg 1995). One of the most eloquent theoretizations of the ideological functions of technology discourse is offered by Jürgen Habermas (1970). Habermas points to the substitution of technical and technological discussions, with their emphasis on instrumental rationality, for political debate, which is based on communicative action and aimed at substantive rationality (see also Marcuse 1991; Feenberg 1991, 1996; Pippin 1995). In his seminal article “Technology and Science as ‘Ideology,’” Habermas (1970) lays out a history of capitalist legitimation whereby a legitimation based on the internal workings of the market (as articulated in neoclassical economics) is replaced by a political legitimation with the emergence of the Keynesian welfare state and the central planning of the economy. From this point onward, political practice is measured in terms of the technical problems at hand rather than in substantive terms. The role of politics is reduced to finding the technical means to achieve goals (especially economic growth) that are understood to lie outside the realm of politics (Habermas 1970, 100–103). Technology discourse is “ideological” to the extent that political issues are treated as technical ones: tensions and contradictions are overcome by delimiting the scope of the political, and, as a result, the instrumental rationality of technical language colonizes the sphere of politics.
Capitalism<sub>,</sub> Technology<sub>,</sub> and the Digital Discourse
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