The presumption of massive, computer-induced social change is less a consequence of convincing evidence than of social myth. Technicism is mythic in the anthropological sense: it is taken for granted in popular discourse, and its presumptions are seldom examined critically in their own right. One's view on the quality of the social change was directly related to one's allegiance to the various groups and interests within society. Ambiguities traceable to technicism remain a major presence in the academic and political literatures about computerization. Ian Benson and John Lloyd trace several technicist presumptions to the 1930s, when the modern period became viewed as the era of the scientific technical revolution (STR). In the computing studies view, the STR is yet to be demonstrated. Within the academic STR literature, a "scientific Utopian" view, optimistic about technological and social progress in spite of existing tendencies toward social disintegration, came to dominate.