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This paper identifies an overlapping critique of technology in the work of four influential Cold War political thinkers: Adorno, Horkheimer, Arendt and Ellul, illustrating how a widely shared critique of technology mediated much thinking about political modernity during this era. Modern technology possesses a certain dynamism, they argue, and can no longer be considered a neutral ‘tool’ but rather a process by which modern politics is being continuously reshaped. Technology, as such, is a critical problem of modernity for these thinkers. Focusing particularly on their analyses of the impact of modern media and communication technologies, the article highlights some of the ways in which technology is seen to influence contemporary politics, specifically through the use of propaganda and the shifting relationship between the public and private in modernity. Whilst technology does not wholly determine politics, it has done much to shape it, these theorists believe, and the modern age presents a politics which is uniquely  unfree , they contend, largely because of the cumulative effect of modern technology. Thinking in terms of technology, therefore, is key to understanding the claim, central to the work of each of these political thinkers, that the character of modernity is essentially hostile to freedom.

The idea of technology in cold war political thought: media, modernity and freedom