Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels coined this phrase, “steel romanticism.” It became a slogan used to increase the German military and economic effort and production.
Steel romanticism drew upon the ideal of steel as the building block of a modern scientific and technological society, stable and permanent.
World War II was followed by a “crude oil romanticism” where people drove late model automobiles in a frenzy of newfound mobility.
Now we are in the midst of a “silicon romanticism” where everybody who is hip or fashionable just absolutely must have the latest smartphone, tablet, iPad, iTunes, GPS, android app, or bling on the Facebook page.
The next fad will no doubt be a bio-engineering fad where people physically incorporate data devices into their own cerebral cortex. The human brain will become obsolete.
How romantic.