ABSTRACT
Andrew Feenberg's claim that Jurgen Habermas has overlooked technology in connection with media theory, and in the whole of Theorie des kommunikativen Handelns is the crux of the matter. In addition it will also have to take on the task of indicating the role that technology plays in the subsumption of the lifeworld under the subsystems, what Habermas calls the colonization of the lifeworld. Although the reproductive mechanisms in a rationalized lifeworld are also connected to communication mediated by means of symbols, it would be unfair to Habermas to interpret him as suggesting that also an internally differentiated and rationalized lifeworld enjoys a pretechnological sleeping-beauty existence. The notion of lifeworld knowledge as a resource must not only be understood hermeneutically on the basis of the concept of background knowledge, but also economically as a means of access to necessary, but scarce resources.
