I'm glad to see you reopen that thread. I'd like to spin it a little further. The scientific release from the spell of myth is held spellbound by a new myth of science.
Unmasterable technology proliferates through the quasi-biological growth cycles of capitalism.
Much has been gained since that time. So much that I still feel enough optimism to go on pointing out how very little the larger situation differs, today, from the one Adorno and Horkheimer described. It faded because the last generation revolted against that regimentation - and all of us exchanging ideas in this forum are in some way children of that fabulous revolt, which lent an extraordinary openness to Western thought and allowed it to throw off much of its bourgeois past, to embrace the diversity that we now enjoy. I love the openness of today's world, which we no longer need to divide up into a first, a second and a third. But those wide-open possibilities are still only available within specific precincts of experience.