The Enchantment of Technology

In this chapter, we examine the cultural roots of our love affair with technology. Drawing on Marshall Berman’sBerman, Marshall insights in All that is Solid Melts into Air (1988), we examine the close relationships among technology, modernity, and modernismModernism. Technology, we suggest, is as much about images as it is about functionality, and the chief image or style associated with technology is modernismModernism, an artistic movement that came into being only in the early twentieth century. The “MetaverseMetaverse”—Facebook’s construction of its new virtual reality—is the perfect representation of this love affair with technology.