While the premise of the illustration is the blending of science and religion, it is significant that it is science that is embedded into religion rather than the other way around. It is the classic image of neurons circling an atom’s nucleus that surrounds the cross and not vice versa. What is important for our discussion here is, of course, the mixture of the rational with the irrational, the mind with the heart, the material with transcendence, instrumentality with meaning. Because at the heart of the transcendental narrative is a reaction to the critique of modernity, rationality, and technology from Max Weber, through Jacque Ellul and Martin Heidegger, to Hebert Marcuse and Theodor Adorno, all of whom seem to have decried the disenchantment of the world with rationalization. The discontents of modernity, this narrative suggests, might have been the reality of previous modernities and therefore previous technological paradigms. What the digital paradigm does, according to the digital discourse, is overcome the chasm represented by these dichotomies and bring those dualisms into a harmonious unity.
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Media and New Capitalism in the Digital Age