a thermodynamically balanced load of production and consumption, thereby doing away with unemployment and debt. The technocracy movement was briefly popular in the US in the early 1930s during the Great Depression. By the mid-1930s, interest in the movement was declining. Some historians have attributed the decline to the rise of Roosevelt's New Deal. Historian William E. Akin rejects this conclusion. Instead, Akin argues that the movement declined in the mid-1930s due to the technocrats' failure to devise a 'viable political theory for achieving change'. Akin postulates that many technocrats remained vocal, dissatisfied, and often sympathetic to anti-New Deal third-party efforts. Critiques Critics have suggested that a "technocratic divide" exists between a governing body controlled to varying extents by technocrats and members of the general public. Technocratic divides are "efficacy gaps that persist between governing bodies employing technocratic principles and members of the general public aiming to contribute to government decision making". Technocracy privileges the opinions and viewpoints of technical experts, exalting them into a kind of aristocracy while marginalizing the opinions and viewpoints of the general public. As major multinational technology corporations (e.g., FAANG) swell market caps and customer counts, critiques of technocratic government in the 21st century see its manifestation in American politics not as an "authoritarian nightmare of oppression and violence" but rather as an éminence grise: a democratic cabal directed by Mark Zuckerberg and the entire cohort of "Big Tech" executives. It is not explained how Mark Zuckerberg or other big tech corporate heads (who are not elected by the people) can form a "democratic" cabal. In his 1982 Technology and Culture journal article, "The Technocratic Image and the Theory of Technocracy", John G. Gunnell presciently writes: "...politics is increasingly subject to the influence of technological change", with specific reference to the advent of The Long Boom and the genesis of the Internet, following the 1973-1975 Recession. Gunnel goes on to add three levels of analysis that delineate technology's political influence: "Political power tends to gravitate towards technological elites". "Technology has become autonomous" and thus impenetrable by political structures. "Technology (and science) constitute a new legitimizing ideology", as well as triumphing over "tribalism, nationalism, the crusading spirit in religion, bigotry, censorship, racism, persecution, immigration and emigration restrictions, tariffs, and chauvinism". In each of the three analytical levels, Gunnell foretells technology's infiltration of political processes and suggests that the entanglement of the two (i.e. technology and politics)