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About this quote

What does it mean?
Technology removes luxury by raising living standards while also limiting fulfillment.
In plain terms
Tech makes life easier but can also strip away deeper satisfaction.
What can you take from it?
Higher standards don’t guarantee personal fulfillment.

Where it applies

  • consumer culture analysis
  • policy debate

Putting it to work

  • evaluate true well‑being
  • balance material comfort with meaning

Questions to consider

  • How does tech affect our sense of fulfillment?
  • Can luxury be redefined in a high‑tech world?

Another view

Some argue technology creates new forms of luxury.

More from Theodor Adorno

  1. 'Quality is decided by the depth at which the work incorporates the alternatives within itself, and so masters them.'

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  2. 'Rather, knowledge comes to us through a network of prejudices, opinions, innervations, self-corrections, presuppositions and exaggerations, in short through t…

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  3. 'Psychology repeats in the case of properties what was done to property. It expropriates the individual by allocating him its happiness.'

    Permalink to quote #72

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