NEW DEVICES, OLD DOMINATION

Abstract

Nowadays, a certain idea of “democratic culture” was established with the property of
enabling a more egalitarian society, solely based on access to mass production. This idea, as is known,
is made possible through intensive advertising procedures not attributed as a means aimed at resolving
vital needs, but, especially, as a complex mechanism aimed at creating unnecessary needs determined
by an apparent reality that acts within the scope of human subjectivity in an integrated way. This
standardization, as expression, presented through icons and factory images tends to eliminate the
particularities of different instances of social life in the modern exchange relationship societies, due in
part to a compromised reception of technology indifferent to its own constructive condition, whereby
the humanity would reach such a condition that would, perhaps, make it possible to organize society in
a different way. If the impossibility - real or not - of formulating theoretical criticism of this state of
affairs still persists today, therein lies the necessary continuity of Critical Theory from a new
approach, considering its effective contribution as something not yet fulfilled.