This is what's up!

What next ...

It ignores many of the ways technological progress in a vacuum can work against democracy and egalitarianism- how the power of unions were crippled by automation, as one notable example. And while technological progress did lead to the end of feudalism, it wasn’t because technology put power in the hands of “the little guy”, and a band of plucky inventors removed the sway the nobility held- quite the opposite. Feudalism was ended because big central states could afford more and better cannons than individual lords could.

And on that note, you have to heavily flanderize your own fictional national leadership if you want a “magic vs science” conflict to occur. Because otherwise, there’s no real reason the evil magic king wouldn’t just go “alright, how far can these newfangled trains send our animated crystal warriors?”

As a consequence, you usually have to strip out any commentary on actual social development in favour of the hamfisted magic vs science narrative where both have to stand in for a lot of very complex issues, so you’re left with a metaphor that is both incredibly unsubtle yet also manages to say absolutely nothing about what it should have been a metaphor of.

Don’t do that