The importance of the atom bomb in triggering an intellectual backlash against modernity cannot be overestimated. Science and the creations of scientific method had long been the linchpins on which the rightness or truth of modern thinking hung. If science could create cars, planes, a means to visit other planets, greater physical comforts and protections, surely scientific rationalism was the best means of understanding our universe. However, when science's ultimate creation, the atom bomb, was recognized as the ultimate means to humanity's self-destruction, scientific rationalism and modernity began to fall into intellectual disfavor. However, technology such as film, television, telephones, computers and email have deepened and emphasized that isolation.
Technology mediates our communication.
It does not allow us to communicate directly. So, it even further isolates us from each other. This technological isolation was another complaint late twentieth century philosophers had against modernity and scientific thinking. Numerous intellectual systems were put forward to deal with modernity's perceived flaws. Humanism was proposed as one means to deal with modernity's intellectual flaws.