Kraus in this passage is evoking the Sorcerer's Apprentice – the unintended unleashing of supernaturally destructive consequences. Although he's talking about the modern newspaper, his critique applies, if anything, even better to contemporary technoconsumerism. For Kraus, the infernal thing about newspapers was their fraudulent coupling of Enlightenment ideals with a relentless pursuit of profit and power. With technoconsumerism, a humanist rhetoric of "empowerment" and "creativity" and "freedom" and "connection" and "democracy" abets the frank monopolism of the techno-titans; the new infernal machine seems increasingly to obey nothing but its own developmental logic, and it's far more enslavingly addictive, and far more pandering to people's worst impulses, than newspapers ever were.

Jonathan Franzen: what's wrong with the modern world | Books | The Guardian Monday, December 23, 2013 @ 7:40pm