The dominant force of the modern world is instrumental reason. This is what dictates the flow of capital within an ever more integrated global economy, what compels our submission to the demands of the computerized manipulation of data, and what subjects us to the dehumanizing possibilities looming over the biotechnology horizon. The problem of modernity becomes conscious in the realization of modernity as a problem. We sense a fatal entrapment from which all avenues of escape have been foreclosed. Neither technology nor its benefits can be surrendered. We can no more live without electricity than we can live without water, as periodic breakdowns vividly remind us. But the costs of our access to electrical energy are measured not just by our monthly utility bills. They are also purchased by the dependence on which our independence has been built. Our putative mastery of light and heat and power is purchased at the cost of our entanglement in the vast network of grids by which we are held fast. Power and powerlessness seem coeval moments.

Normally the irony passes without remark. It is only when the realization of our predicament is propelled into consciousness that the contradiction becomes explicit. Then we cast a glance over the whole development in which we have become entangled and bemoan the loss of our freedom. We see that it has been an ever more comprehensive project of liberation that has paradoxically led to our ever greater confinement.