Technology has always been important for the survival of mankind; so, it is a serving sphere. Yet for modernity it seems to have a meaning that goes beyond its serving function. It is generally recognized that modern society is necessarily dynamic in the sense in which Marx said of the bourgeoisie that it “cannot exist without constantly revolutionizing the instruments of production, and … with them the whole relations of society.” It is not just technology that is necessary for securing modern society; rather, it is a technology that needs unremitting growth and promotion. Because much energy and attention has to go into technology, for many people it has turned from a means to an end. Moreover, social theorists of the twentieth century as different as Karl Polanyi and Peter Drucker agree that the disasters of their century were conditioned by the misfit of the rise of modern industry, which is a form of technology, and the prevailing social and mental conditions. Polanyi aimed at the Great Transformation from the preindustrial to a functioning industrial society, and Drucker at the Future of Industrial Man after the End of Economic Man. Both of them expected technology to dictate the character and meaning of future society.

Before them, Marx claimed that “modern industry … imposes the necessity of recognizing, as a fundamental law of production, variation of work, consequently … the greatest possible development of his [the worker's] varied aptitudes.”