I attended the DLD conference in Munich in January, a great get-together of internet, design and marketing types (and lots of other people), glamourously organized by Burda, a German media company.

On the train back, I wrote a blog post about the conference (in German) that I entitled "The demystification of the digital world", referring to the concept of demystification ("Entzauberung") as introduced by the German sociologist Max Weber in the early years of the 20th century.

I had written about demystification before, describing it as a crucial skill for the 21st century. Demystification as Weber understands it is the notion that everything in our world is theoretically understandable - that there are no myths anymore. In the context of DLD and the digital world, I used the expression to describe the notion that - theoretically - (almost) everything is now technologically possible. This leads to a shift in focus from the "How" to the "Why". We are less impressed by technological breakthroughs just because they are breakthroughs, and increasingly start asking the question what the new technologies are actually good for.

I believe that Weber saw demystification as something very positive, and I also see the demystification of the digital world as a positive development that shifts focus to more relevant questions. I was thus surprised when I found out (through reading «Chief Culture Officer» by Grant McCracken, who references Weber) that the German word "Entzauberung" that Weber uses is translated into english as "disenchantment" - which to me has a clearly negative connotation.

I am, however, not a native English speaker, so here's my question: Does the word "disenchantment" really have negative connotations in English, and does as a result of this maybe even Webers concept have a negative connotation?