Technopoly: An Analysis

Neil Postman starts the beginning of one chapter in "Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology” with “Technopoly is a state of culture. It is also a state of mind. It consists in the deification of technology, which means that the culture seeks its authorization in technology, finds its satisfactions in technology, and takes its orders from technology. This requires the development of a new kind of social order, and of necessity leads to the rapid dissolution of much that is associated with traditional beliefs.” (Postman 71) This is the basis of Postman’s arguments throughout the beginning of the book.

Thought it appears a bit wordy at first, the book is an interesting read. Postman starts the book off by buttering himself up a bit, whilst talking about Technophiles, …one-eyed prophets who see only what new technologies can do and are incapable of imagining what they will undo.” (Postman 5) He asserts that the majority of the public these days are Technophiles. Opposing the Technophiles are the Technophobes, with averse opinions. Though Postman makes very clear the vast problems with being a Technophile, he makes quite clear that he is in no way one of them. Instead, he believes he is in between, a middling mind whose wisdom allows him to see both sides of the argument. Though he makes some good arguments throughout the paper and obviously knows the subject matter, I feel a bit more humility would have been less distasteful. I came off not wanting to listen to what he had to say, regardless of its truth. Nonetheless, the book is required reading, so I trekked onward. Throughout the book he makes continual reference to the story of Thamus the King and Theuth the inventor; in Postman’s analogy Theuth is the Technophile and he himself is the King. See what I mean about humility? The King has the wisdom to be able to see the repercussions, both positive and negative, of many of Theuth’s inventions, the most touched upon being the written language.

I found the differences between “Technopoly” and Eric Swedin and David Ferro’s “Computers: The Life Story of a Technology” to be very interesting; not the subject matter, but the way the authors made clear their feelings for the technology they were writing about through their words. Postman spoke with almost a disdain for the technology he was writing about, as well as the American people. I was not surprised to see that he was 61 at the time of the writing of “Technopoly” and often considered a Luddite by many of his critics. Swedin and Ferro, on the other hand, spoke with an almost fervor for the computers they wrote of. It was almost a rush to read “Computers . . . ”, as it was written with such ardor.

Though I appear to be ripping into this novel thus far, it has made some interesting and thought-provoking points. Hopefully the second half does more of that.