In the article, Benjamin argued technological reproducibility reduces the authenticity and aura of modern artwork. Industrialization and mechanization leading to mass production, which lowers its cult value.
I believe that art can act as a mean to establish a better relationship between human beings and technology. The writer described it as the “social function of film”(Benjamin, 2008) in particular example. French philosopher, Bernard Stiegler and American philosopher, Alva Noë also share the similar thoughts: artworks allows us to reorganize life by detachment from the reality and reflect on the the importance of technology.
However, it is doubtful that “society was not mature enough to make technology its organ”(Benjamin, 2008). Technology itself is an extension of the ability of human beings to reduce their limitations. It has already become a thinking pattern in our daily lives since civilization developed and its new purposes and values will be discovered and evolved with the society.
Reference
Benjamin, Walter, Michael William Jennings, Brigid Doherty, Thomas Y. Levin, and Jephcott E. The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility, and Other Writings on Media. Cambridge, Mass: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2008.
—Law Vanessa Lok Tung 3035825095
Aside from what you have mentioned, Benjamin’s concern about the artworks’ loss of authenticity and aura also rooted in his suspicion of what modernisation might (see p.19). He argues how “the technological reproducibility of the artwork changes the relation of the masses to art” (p.36) and how the tension between the artwork’s cult and exhibition value might lead capitalism into abolition. With regard to your last point about society and technology, although technology might be, as you would put it, the extension of human ability in coping with their limitations, would you think those who create the technology operates on the same level as the masses? (see p.39 for Benjamin’s definition of “the masses”).