He began talking about a split between “authoritarian” and “democratic” types of technologies. The term “authoritarian” was affixed to complex, centralized systems, over which individual humans could exert little control, while the term “democratic” was reserved for smaller scale systems that could be controlled by individuals. A key factor in the power of “authoritarian” technologies was that they steadily worked to eliminate alternatives to themselves.
Half a century ago, Lewis Mumford developed a concept that explains why we trade autonomy for convenience