Promethean gap

The Promethean gap (German: prometheisches Gefälle) is a concept concerning the relations of humans and technology and a growing "asynchronization" between them.

[1] The concept originated with philosopher Günther Anders in the 1950s and for him, an extreme test case was the atomic bomb and its use at Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, a symbol of the larger technology revolution that the 20th century was witnessing.

[16] Günther Anders (1902–1992), born in Germany and of Jewish descent, attempted to conceptualize the discrepancy between humans and technology based on his observations and hands-on experience as an émigré in the United States, and his general theoretical background in Marxist concepts such as substructure and superstructure.

[24][25] In Burning Conscience (1961), letters between US airman Claude Eatherly and Gunther, Gunther writes,[26] your task consists in bridging the gap that exists between your two faculties... to level off the incline... you have to violently widen the narrow capacity of your imagination (and the even narrower one of your feelings) until imagination and feeling become capable to grasp and to realize the enormity of your doings; until you are capable to seize and conceive, to accept or reject it—in short: your task is: to widen your moral fantasy.

[27]Gunther considered the service members of the US Army Air Forces unit 509th Composite Group, which conducted the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and of which Eatherly was a part, as an example of people affected by the Promethean gap.

Anders uses this story as symbolism, where the fire is modern technology and the eternal punishment given to Prometheus the negative consequences.