Abstract
In this paper I will give an overview of what can be deemed Walter Benjamin’s theory of technology. I will put particular emphasis on what Benjamin defined as the “shattering” effect technological progress had on traditional notions of “experience” within modern society. Benjamin saw within technology not only a destructive, but also a liberating potential. He realized how new technologies could play a vital role in reestablishing what he called a new, mimetic “communion with the cosmos”. This interaction with nature was for long suppressed by a modern paradigm of progress and rationality, and suppressed within the individual through the shock-effect of modern life. Through his critique of these aspects of modernity, he forms alternatives to the way technology is implemented within the capitalist framework. By alternative modes of technological utilization, Benjamin sees possibilities for freeing the masses from the constraints of modern capitalist mastery over the proletariat and nature. Benjamin saw this as synonymous with revolution. Through harnessing the power of the new technologies, Benjamin envisaged that the destructive “shattering” of tradition could lead to a potential healing of nature and humanity.