Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology

It is difficult, if not impossible, stray too far into the literature of contemporary cultural criticism without running headlong into a Neil Postman reference…typically brief, often coated with a benign diplomacy that betrays nothing useful, and sometimes with a tone of sighing obligation. It seems that, like Stanley Fish, Neil Postman is one of that breed of intellectual that takes an almost excessive delight in raining on OTHER people's parades.I'll admit, as a scholar in my own small right, I felt a bit uncomfortable reading a scholar who…well, deeply questioned whether or not our culture even really understood what "scholarship" really was. (Just read his thoughts on social "science" and the value of "statistics," and you'll understand that last sentence.)But Postman is not some sociology prof-reject out to right some past tenure-interview-gone-terribly-awry. The project of "Technology" is at once more basic and more profound. Honestly, I found the argument of the book incredibly simple and easy-to-follow: The relationship of humanity to its technologies has passed through two complete evolutionary stages: from tool-using to technocracy and has now entered a third phase that is the title of the book. The issue here is not the development of specific technologies (note the lowercase "t") but a shift in the positioning of Technology (note the capital "T") in relationship to other domains of knowledge. No longer content to coexist with, say, other realms of truth-telling like Religion and Tradition, Technology now threatens to overtake them. As Postman writes:"Technopoly eliminates alternatives to itself…It does not make them illegal. It does not make them immoral. It does not even make them unpopular. It makes them invisible and therefore irrelevant" (p. 48).Technopoly is, he summarizes, "totalitarian technocracy." To put his point in more theological terms that I can better grasp, modern Western societies (especially the USA) now have more faith in the promise of Technology than they do in the promise of Humanity. (Faith in the promise of Divinity began its slow fade with the rise of the Enlightenment, but that is a digression from the topic at hand.) The balance has subtly shifted from optimism that WE (Humanity) could shape Technology to meet OUR ends to a new kind of optimism that Technology could rescue/save US from the frightening ends to which we have put it. So, in the Technopolist world, the answer to, say, the threat of nuclear holocaust is—in fact, MUST be—a technological one. Bigger bombs, better defense systems, satellites with lasers…you get the point, I hope.Postman is not out to destroy Technology; he doesn't promote some impossible return to a pre-technological age. Rather, he wants to break Technology's DOMINATION over other ways and realms of human knowing. Postman simply tries to illuminate Technopoly's slow creep. Ever so subtly, Technology has become the Master and Humanity has assumed the role of servant. Truth is reduced to Data; Wisdom is misidentified as Information. And anything that does not easily convert to a "data-stream" format—any Truth that cannot be spit out as a number in a data table—becomes useless. What makes the effects of Technopoly so insidious is both their subtlety and their pervasiveness. This kind of thinking is literally everywhere, from dating websites that match users based on some system of personality "profiling" to educational assessment strategies that focus on "data-driven decision-making processes" (if I had a dollar for every time I heard THAT phrase at an accreditation conference). And in a Technopoly, the educator doesn't even think to ask: "Why should data be what drives educational decisions?" What a person earns after completing a college degree actually tells you very little about whether or not they are an "educated" person; it's simply a good way for the government to track their ROI on student grants & loans programs, a classically Technopolist concern.I suppose it feels a bit overblown to describe a book as "revolutionary." And perhaps you will think Postman's work ISN'T that, after all. But it is the closest I'VE come to a "revolutionary" read in the past few years. Postman's problem is not that his observations are off-base; his problem is that they are prophetic…observations that will "take on" meaning and significance as the decades pass. And, unfortunately, as with the observations of most prophets, I fear their truth will recognized by most in society at a point too late to matter.

Cultural critic Neil Postman goes after what he calls technolopy which is essentially a "self-justifying, self-perpetuating system wherein technology of every kind is cheerfully grantedsovereingty over social institutions and national life."Postman is not by any means an luddite but he wants us to be aware of how technology has shaped our society,and epistemology. Often not for the better in many respects.We live in a society that does not use machines but is more and more used by them. It shapes our world view. Postman attempts to trace it's effect on us from the beginning. Overall he does a fine a job. Although a easy read many of the topics require closer scrutiny and thinking. Which is good, he wants you to think about whats happening not just accept what he has to say.In one chapter he roasts the medical industry's infatuation with new technology while the doctors neglect their patients. Patients invariably are reduced to slabs of meat on a assembly line. He makes the salient point that information is not understanding, which is usually ignored by most promoters of technopoly.Another chapter deals with 'scientism' which is science distorted into a intolerant fundamentalist belief system and its effects on our society. This chapter is his most humorous as he disects some the masters of the obvious(Dilbert like scientists who think they have discovered something profound but what most people on the street already know)Like people are afraid of death and that open minded people tend to be open minded. That's right Ph.d's have done studies to prove these notions! Perhaps a better title for this chapter would have been "the marching morons of science."The last chapter deals on how to resist technology in our daily lives. Which he sums ups in several points(not all of them are listed in this review). Though it's not enough in my opinion, considering technolopy's corrosive influence on people and cultures throughout the world. Things need to be addressed at the nation policy level if anything is to be really changed.* who do not regard the aged as irrelevant* who admire technological ingenuity but do not think it represents the highest form of human achievement.* who are at least, suspicious of the idea of progress, and who do not confuse information with understanding.* who have freed themselves from the belief in the magical power of numbers, do not regard calculations as an adequate substitute for judgement or as synonym for truth.The book is a good starting point to informing oneself on the minuses of technology. Though dated much of his observations are still relevant and a good antidote to high tech mavens like Kelly, Moravec and their ilk. Another good book is David Ehrenfeld's "Beginning Again" written from a profession biologist POV. Or better yet, get Wendell Berry's tract "Life is a miracle" which a rather thorough disection of technolopy's epistemology and what lies beneath it's pretty public facade.

Excelente!

Great read, Neil Postman was a great thinker and writer. Highly recommended read for people who think technology is beneficial for our development and overlooking the destructive nature of human domestication and addiction.

Amazing book Exploring the effect of tech

One of the best essays about good and bad things of techno life.

A massive critical scholarship is evident in every sentence of this book!!! A must read for younger generations just to be wary what they are upto with unmanageable technology at their disposal. Just Fabulous !!!