-------- Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology

Neil Postman

NEIL POSTMAN ANSWERS YOUR QUESTIONS:

A question from Paige MacLean:

Technology seems to be developing faster than our ability to understand what we're using it for. Do you see any necessity for slowing the growth of new technology? Are you or others creating forums for such a debate? (Ironically the Internet seems the perfect place for such an exchange!)

Dr. Postman responds to Paige MacLean:

Dear Paige,

I don't think any of us can do much about the rapid growth of new technology. A new technology helps to fuel the economy, and any discussion of slowing its growth has to take account of economic consequences. However, it is possible for us to learn how to control our own uses of technology. The "forum" that I think is best suited for this is our educational system. If students get a sound education in the history, social effects and psychological biases of technology, they may grow to be adults who use technology rather than be used by it.

A question from Jennifer in Washington, DC:

What are the positive effects of new and emerging technologies? Are there ways to maximize the benefits of the Internet and e-mail while minimizing the possible negative effects on society?

Dr. Postman responds to Jennifer in Washington, DC:

Dear Jennifer,

Although, to be sure, there are many positive aspects of new and emerging technologies, I am not the best person to answer your question. I have concentrated my attention on the possible negative consequences, mostly because everyone else seems to speak about the advantages technology will bring. Someone needs to mention what may be lost. Of course, one of the problems is that what I would judge to be a negative consequence, someone else might see as a positive consequence. For example, telephones in automobiles seem to me a very bad idea. So does spending a lot of hours "communicating" on the Internet when one could use that time reading Cervantes' Don Quixote.

A question from Alice Clapman:

Television is a medium where a producer or reporter has complete control over the programming content. Cyberspace decentralizes the information distribution process. Isn't that a good thing? I think that is a problem to which the Internet is a solution.

Dr. Postman responds to Alice Clapman:

Dear Alice,

It is not entirely true that a TV producer or reporter has complete control over the contents of programs. The interests and inclinations of the audience have as much to do with the what is on television as do the ideas of the producer and reporter. Still, I understand your point, and I would agree that cyberspace contributes to the decentralization of information. Of course, so does a library and so does a conversation. The Internet may well be a solution (as you say), but of course, like any solution creates new problems--for example, the absence of "gatekeepers" who are useful in separating the irrelevant from the relevant and even the true from the false.

A question from Jonathan Salant:

People with fast modems and powerful machines can participate in the creative and thought provoking experiments on the Internet, but those without the right equipment cannot. What can we do to alleviate the difference between the haves and the have-nots in cyberspace?

Dr. Postman responds to Jonathan Salant:

Dear Jonathan,

I think there will always be a gulf between the haves and have-nots, so far as technology is concerned. Such a gulf even exists between automobiles. Most people can afford to buy an automobile, but there is a big difference between a Mercedes-Benz and a Saturn. But even when the problem of the access to technology is solved so that anyone who wishes can have access to technology, there still remains a problem. For example, just about anyone has access to a public library (at least in America). In that library we find the greatest, most profound, most illuminating literature that human beings have so far produced. Do most people read these books? Have you read Cervantes? Have you read the sonnets of Shakespeare? Have you read Hagel or Nietzsche? Their books are in the library, you have access to them, why have you not familiarized yourself with this literature? (Even if you have, I think you will agree that most people have not. Why?)

A question from Debbie Hemenway:

The very fact that I can zap you this message both fascinates and frightens me. I am a 50- year-old dinosaur, still wedded to print and paper, teaching 14 to 18-year-olds who apparently have a different brain than mine, one that is wired to be wired, to take information in bits and bytes. How do we educate these kids? How do we keep the things we value and still prepare them for the world in which they surely will live?

Dr. Postman responds to Debbie Hemenway:

Dear Debbie,

The question you ask is one I have pondered for the past 30 years. In fact I have written six books in which I have tried to answer the question. May I suggest to you that two of these books- Technopoly and The End of Education- contain the best answers I can think of.

ADDITIONAL THOUGHTS

A selected sample of responses from our visitors, provided in addition to those answered by Dr. Postman.

Lyn Burr Brignoli

Undoubtedly, the new technology can never substitute for human values. The dilemma is not new, however. Do we use our knowledge of nuclear fission to make a bomb, or for power to heat our houses, or for medicine to heal people? Knowledge, i.e. technology, without a moral underpinning becomes chaos, just as democracy without ethical values is chaos. Vaclav Havel wrote a magnificent essay along these lines published last year in "First Things." Why do we think technology is above morality in the first place? The real question is, how should I conduct my life?--rather than-- what tools should I use?

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Leo Hannenberg

I support computer systems at Beth Israel Hospital in Boston, MA. I have experience developing WWW pages. I tend to agree with Neil Postman that there is a definite limit to the value of new technology. I think that using computers (particularly the internet) as an education tool has some merit, but I think it is only valuable in *addition* to basic education values, e.g., research techniques, basic reasoning, etc. I share his concern that computers are being used as a shortcut, and I don't think this is wise.

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Robert Lindeman, MD-PhD

Dr. Postman: I wonder if you could comment on this phenomenon of "Technology-in-Search- of-Applications". In other words, when a technology or method turns out to be less promising than expected, we have a tendency to scramble to find other uses for the technology, as if to "save its life". Death, in this case, being obsolescence.

An example is Extracorporeal Membrane Oxygenation (ECMO), which showed enormous promise at one time, but now is becoming almost obsolete. "Almost" obsolete because researchers continue to search for applications despite repeated failures.

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Scott Shaffer

I think that new technology will ultimately end up creating more of a representative democracy in our country. Everybody will able to have a voice because everyone will be able to use the technology to get their opinions heard. We all know that there are some who just can't get over their own fears enough to speak in front of an assembly, but everybody will be able to put their opinions down electronically and send it to others. It will level the playing field between the politicians trained in public speaking and the little guy.

There is this old cartoon that shows 2 dogs working on a computer, and the dog at the keyboard says to the other, "On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog." While this is cute and humorous, it is really true. Nobody knows if I'm educated or uneducated, black or white, fat or thin.

I think we'll see an election in the not too distant future that is decided by a candidate's ability to communicate on the 'net, much like Kennedy defeated Nixon because he was more effective on TV.

This is the promise of new technology, and I hope that out there elected officials realize this and promote it.

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Mike McCole

In your last News Hour interview you stated : "And if people are getting divorced and mistreating their children and their sexism and racism are blights on our social life, none of that has anything to do with inadequate information. Now, along comes cyberspace and the information superhighway, and everyone seems to have the idea that, ah, here we can do it; if only we can have more access to more information faster and in more diverse forms at long last, we'll be able to solve these problems."

I have been involved with computer technology and the internet for many years and have never heard or read anyone express or even imply such a stupid concept as that. Where did you get the idea that "eveyone" seems to think that computer and internet communication can be a panacea for social ills? This smells like a straw man argument to me and calls in to question your inellectual honesty in exploring this subject. How's the book selling?

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Ted Lehmann

I'm still teaching as a subversive act- ivity. Your book influenced me as a young teacher. The new technology represents a move away from repression and control in schools. Students, many of whom are little curious about what we choose to teach, can access the new technology to learn in dir- ections we, as teachers, cannot even imagine.

Because of the freedom represented by opportunities like the internet, our entire conception of how students learn, what they learn, and how they present what they learn will now be challenged. The greatest problems that I see lie in two areas. How can we have any sense that work students present is their own work? What can we do to keep the spread of technology from in- creasing the gap between rich and poor, be- tween white people and people of color in America and in the third world? I'll keep an eye on this forum.

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David Terris

Neil Postman stated that "...school, it seems to me, has always been about how to learn as a group. School has never really been about individualized learning but how to be socialized..." That is quite a statement. My group didn't learn how to solve equations. I as an individual did. The group does not understand a concept. Each individual in the group either does or does not understand.

Later you state, "And I worry about the personal computer because it seems once again to emphasize individual learning, individual activity."

You are quite negative about the idea of individual learning, individual activity. Why is this bad?

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Lenn Harley

There will always be rich and poor. There are inventors and there are luddites. Today it's the evil of technology. Horse feathers. It's part of what separates us from the rest of the animals. We invent, we learn, we grow, we advance. I believe Dr. Postman is no more than a contrarian, and probably making a good living as such.

My question to Dr. Postman is, which force do you believe has caused more misery to society over the past three thousand years, technology or religion?

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Christian G. Cullen

Technology can never be a substitute for human spirituality.

Yet in the present information explosion, the technology empowers the people by giving them greater access to the affairs of their government than ever available before. It empowers us as citizens, to vote from a better informed perspective.

Why would anyone want to restrict this access? -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Michael Katzmann, Annapolis MD

It seems to me that the use of computers in schools has been tackled from the wrong end. Most of the effort has centred on the mechanics of operating computers rather than actually computers as a tool to acheive a defined goal. The technology has bamboozled the educators into concentrating on the means rather than the ends.

The computers that most people will end up using, it seems to me, will shortly resemble appliances rather than the cumbersum devices we so laboriously teach our children to use.

Isn't our current path of computer education a waste of time for all those except those few who will enter electronic engineering ?

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Thane Terrill

The question is not whether we should have the Internet or other forms of technology; rather, the question is how it can best be used. The Internet will certainly kill rote learning because rote learning cannot stand the light of direct experience. The Internet may bring back the interactivity that television has taken away. Media is not just the message but it creates the message by transforming the world.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Eric Plosky

How do you explain the paradox created by the fact that ethical problems that result from new technologies are sometimes solved only by the development of still newer technologies, which themselves cause ethical problems?

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Bart Binning

If we are in the middle of a paradigm shift, and the new paradigm will be focused on communicaiton and computers, will we need to add computer skills to the Reading Writing and Arithmetic that people need to learn to be independent self-reliant adults? Or will the technology become so simple and universal that no one will notice?

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John Robert Boynton

In your previous interview you said: "if there are children starving in Somalia or any other place, it's not because of insufficient information." I hope you would agree, though, that it was not a shortage in world food supplies, but military/feudal/gang decisions within Somalia, and insufficient political will outside of Somalia. Can you see the internet as also providing opportunities to promote values: organize a Million Man March, or let young people from around the world discuss what they think should be done?

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TECHNOLOGY AND TECHNOPOLY

TECHNOPOLY LINKS

·         Postman by Nancy Kaplan

·         Review of Technopoly

·         Technolopoly review

·         Technological determinism

·         Media Determinism

Top of Page| Entrance to Site| Introduction| Technopoly| The End of Education| The Children's Machine Version Française| Things That Make us Smart|The Art of Human-Computer Interface Design|The Gutenberg Elegies|Being Digital| School's Out |Synthesis|

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Neil Postman is No Progressive

by Jay Walljasper

Conscious Choice, January 2000

Don't call Neil Postman a progressive. He may be a consistent and cutting critic of capitalism. He may be on the editorial board of The Nation magazine. He may be the author of the sixties classic, Teaching As a Subversive Activity. And he may have once believed in the tenets of progress. But no more.

Postman now calls himself a conservative, and contends that most others who now use that label -- loyal Republicans and corporate boosters -- are actually radicals. He explained why in a speech given several years back to a group of business leaders and academics in Vienna. "A capitalist cannot afford the pleasures of conservatism, and of necessity regards tradition as an obstacle to be overcome.... It is fairly easy to document that capitalists have been a force for radical social change since the 18th Century, especially in the United States.... In today's America...if anyone should raise the question, 'What improves the human spirit?' Americans are apt to offer a simple formulation: That which is new is better, that which is newest is best.

"The best cure for such a stupid philosophy is conservatism. My version, not President Reagan's."

Postman, chair of the Department of Culture and Communications at New York University, has spent many years researching the social consequences of television, and he says that's what made him a skeptic of technological progress.

"Along with everyone else I was delighted with television," he remembers. "But somewhere in the mid-sixties I began to see that there was going to be a downside to the wonders of television. It would change our social habits, and not necessarily for the better. It would affect our perceptions of what we might do with our leisure time. It would have some serious effects on literacy, and most of all it was having a very unhealthy effect on young people."

Postman thinks the left "has been insufficiently attentive to what it means to live in a technological culture," but he saves his strongest denunciations for so-called conservatives, who gladly sacrifice all cultural and social traditions at the altar where technology and profit are married.

"I think the single most important lesson we should have learned in the past twenty years," Postman offers, "is that technological progress is not the same things as human progress. Technology always comes at a price. This is not to say that one should be, in a blanket way, against technological change. But it is time for us to be grownups, to understand if technology gives us something, it will take away something. It is not an unmixed blessing. We have to go into the future with our eyes wide open."

As we enter a new age in information technology that makes the influence of television appear quaint, Postman counsels that technology needs to be made into a political issue. He notes that Americans, speaking through their Congress members, rejected supersonic transport planes (SSTs) in the seventies as unnecessary. The same public debate ought to occur about all new technologies.

Postman notes technological advances are always billed as a way to increase our options, when often just the opposite is true. "New technology is sort of imperialistic. It destroys older technologies," he says, noting that a publisher rejected the typewritten manuscript of his most recent book and insisted that he submit it on a computer disk.

"In imagining a society of the future, I hope people would be a little more sensible about this and allow older forms of human communication to co-exist with newer ways. People would have more consciousness of the effects of technology and there would be room for some of us who like to do it the older way."

The greatest danger Postman sees in the mad rush to adopt every new form of technology that pops up is, "it creates the impression that the most serious problems we have in the world are the result of inadequate technology and insufficient information."

"Look at starvation, for example," he continues. "We already have enough knowledge to feed everyone on the planet. If there is crime rampant on the streets of a big city, that has nothing to do with information. As you go through and look at our most serious problems, you'll see they have very little to do with information. They are not amenable to technological solutions. But a lot of people think technology is the only way we should go. So there is a real sense that we may be distracted from addressing the real causes of these problems."

Postman sees a number of positive signs that Americans are now shedding their longstanding naivete, blindness, and idealism about the effects of technology. "Twenty years ago no one would have been interested in this kind of discussion, now you can really draw a crowd. There are all kinds of new books on the subject. Parents are really wondering about television. They're asking questions about computer games and whether they should be paying money to have their kids sit in front of their computers for hours and never go out on the street and talk to anyone. There is an audience out there waiting to be organized to exert pressure in making sure that we think a little more clearly on these matters.

"People have begun to sense that there's something really not quite right about making all your aspirations related to bigger and better technology.

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Computer-Mediated Communication Magazine / Volume 2, Number 3 / March 1, 1995 / Page 34

What Neil Postman has to say ...

by Nancy Kaplan

On this page, you will find extensive passages from Postman's recent book, Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology. I have chosen these excerpts because they provide the context for ideas and quotations to which my essay, "E-literacies: Politexts, Hypertexts, and Other Cultural Formations in the Late Age of Print," refers. Thus, I attempt to allow Professor Postman to speak for himself, to represent his own views in his own way. Some of the links in the text will take you to the bibliography while others will take you to some portion of my essay.

Postman, Neil. Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology, New York, Vintage Books, pp. 22-48.

I find it necessary, for the purpose of clarifying our present situation and indicating what dangers lie ahead, to create still another taxonomy. Cultures may be classed into three types: tool-using cultures, technocracies, and technopolies. At the present time, each type may be found somewhere on the planet, although the first is rapidly disappearing: we must travel to exotic places to find a too-using culture. If we do, it is well to go armed with the knowledge that, until the seventeenth century, all cultures were tool-users. There was, of course, considerable variation from one culture to another in the tools that were available. Some had only spears and cooking utensils. Some had water mills and coal- and horsepower. But the main characteristic of all tool-using cultures is that their tools were largely invented to do two things: to solve specific and urgent problems of physical life, such as in the use of waterpower, windmills, and the heavy-wheeled plow; or to serve the symbolic world of art, politics, myth, ritual, and religion, as in the construction of castles and cathedrals and the development of the mechanical clock. In either case, tools did not attack (or , more precisely, were not intended to attack) the dignity and integrity of the culture into which they were introduced. With some exceptions, tools did not prevent people from believing in their traditions, in their God, in their politics, in their methods of education, or in the legitimacy of their social organization....

[A]fter one acknowledges that no taxonomy ever neatly fits the realities of a situation, and that in particular the definition of a tool-using culture lacks precision, it is still both possible and useful to distinguish a tool-using culture from a technocracy. In a technocracy, tools play a central role in the thought-world of the culture. Everything must give way, in some degree, to their development. The social and symbolic worlds become increasingly subject to the requirements of that development. Tools are not integrated into the culture; they attack the culture. The bid to become the culture. As a consequence, tradition, social mores, myth, politics, ritual, and religion have to fight for their lives....

And so two opposing world-views -- the technological and the traditional -- coexisted in uneasy tension. The technological was the stronger, of course, but the traditional was there -- still functional, still exerting influence, still too much alive to ignore. This is what we find documented not only in Mark Twain but in the poetry of Walt Whitman, the speeches of Abraham Lincoln, the prose of Thoreau, the philosophy of Emerson, the novels of Hawthorne and Melville, and, most vividly of all, in Alexis de Tocqueville's monumental Democracy in America. In a word, two distinct thought-worlds were rubbing against each other in nineteenth-century America.

With the rise of Technopoly, one of those thought-worlds disappears. Technopoly eliminates alternatives to itself in precisely the way Aldous Huxley outlined in Brave New World. 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. And it does so by redefining what we mean by religion, by art, by family, by politics, by history, by truth, by privacy, by intelligence, so that our definitions fit its new requirements. Technopoly, in other words, is totalitarian technocracy.

Postman, Neil. Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology, New York, Vintage Books, pp. 71-72.

Technopoly is a state of culture. It is also a state of mind. It consists in the deificaiton 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. Those who feel most comfortable in Technopoly are those who are convinced that technical progress is humanity's superhuman achievement and the instrument by which our most profound dilemmas may be solved. They also believe that information is an unmixed blessing, which through its continued and uncontrolled production and dissemination offers increased freedom, creativity, and peace of mind. The fact that information does none of these things -- but quite the opposite -- seems to change few opinions, for unwavering beliefs are an inevitable product of the structure of Technopoly. In particular, Technopoly flourishes when the defenses against information break down.

The relationship between information and the mechanisms for its control is fairly simple to describe: Technology increases the available supply of information. As the supply is increased, control mechanisms are strained. Additional control mechanisms are needed to cope with new information. When additional control mechanisms are themselves technical, they in turn further increase the supply of information. When the supply of information is no longer controllable, a general breakdown in psychic tranquillity and social purpose occurs. Without defenses, people have no way of finding meaning in their experiences, lose their capacity to remember, and have difficulty imagining reasonable futures.

One way of defining Technopoly, then, is to say it is what happens to society when the defenses against information glut have broken down. It is what happens when institutional life becomes inadequate to cope with too much information. It is what happens when a culture, overcome by information generated by technology, tries to employ technology itself as a means of providing clear direction and humane purpose. The effort is mostly doomed to failure. Though it is sometimes possible to use a disease as a cure for itself, this occurs only when we are fully aware of the processes by which disease is normally held in check. My purpose here is to describe the defenses that in principle are available and to suggest how they have become dysfunctional.

Postman, Neil. Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology, New York, Vintage Books, pp. 118-20.

Because of what computers commonly do, they place an inordinate emphasis on the technical processes of communications and offer very little in the way of substance. With the exception of the electric light, there never has been a technology that better exemplifies Marshall McLuhan's aphorism "The medium is the message." The computer is almost all process. There are, for example, no "great computerers," as there are great writers, painters, or musicians. [I can't resist interjecting here: there are no great "pencilers" or "brushers" either. What is this guy thinking?] There are "great programs" and "great programmers," but their greatness lies in their ingenuity either in simulating a human function or in creating new possibilities of calculation, speed, and volume. Of course, if J. David Bolter is right, it is possible that in the future computers will emerge as a new kind of book, expanding and enriching the tradition of writing technologies. Since printing created new forms of literature when it replaced the handwritten manuscript, it is possible that electronic writing will do the same. But for the moment, computer technology functions more as a new mode of transportation than a as new means of substantive communication. It moves information -- lots of it, fast, and mostly in calculating mode. The computer, in fact, makes possible the fulfillment of Descartes' dream of the mathematization of the world. Computers make it easy to convert facts into statistics and to translate problems into equations. And whereas this can be useful (as when the process reveals a pattern that would otherwise go unnoticed), it is diversionary and dangerous when applied indiscriminately to human affairs. So is the computer's emphasis on speed and especially its capacity to generate and store unprecedented quantities of information. In specialized contexts, the value of calculation, speed, and voluminous information may go uncontested. But the "message" of computer technology is comprehensive and domineering. The computer argues, to put it baldly, that the most serious problems confronting us at both personal and professional levels require technical solutions through fast access to information otherwise unavailable. I would argue that this is, on the face of it, nonsense. Our most serious problems are not technical, nor do they arise from inadequate information. If a nuclear catastrophe occurs, it shall not be because of inadequate information. Where people are dying of starvation, it does not occur because of inadequate information. If families break up, children are mistreated, crime terrorizes a city, education is impotent, it does not happen because of inadequate information. Mathematical equations, instantaneous communication, and vast quantities of information have nothing whatever to do with any of these problems. And the computer is useless in addressing them.

Postman, Neil. Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology, New York, Vintage Books, pp. 16-19.

We can imagine that Thamus would also have pointed out to Gutenberg, as he did to Theuth, that the new invention would create a vast population of readers who "will receive a quantity of information without proper instruction...[who will be filled] will the conceit of wisdom instead of real wisdom"; that reading, in other words, will compete with older forms of learning. This is yet another principle of technological change we may infer from the judgment of Thamus: new technologies compete with old ones -- for time, for attention, for money, for prestige, but mostly for dominance of their world-view. This competition is implicit once we acknowledge that the medium contains an ideological bias. And it is a fierce competition, as only ideological competitions can be. It is not merely a matter of tool against tool -- the alphabet attacking ideographic writing, the printing press attacking the illuminated manuscript, the photograph attacking the art of painting, television attacking the printed word. When media make war against each other, it is a case of world-views in collision.

In the United States, we can see such collisions everywhere -- in politics, in religion, in commerce -- but we see them most clearly in the schools, where two great technologies confront each other in uncompromising aspect for the control of students' minds. On the one hand, there is the world of the printed word with its emphasis on logic, sequence, history, exposition, objectivity, detachment, and discipline. On the other there is the world of television with its emphasis on imagery, narrative, presentness, simultaneity, intimacy, immediate gratification, and quick emotional response. Children come to school having been deeply conditioned by the biases of television. There, they encounter the world of the printed word. A sort of psychic battle takes place, and there are many casualties -- children who can't learn to read or won't, children who cannot organize their thought into logical structure even in a simple paragraph, children who cannot attend to lectures or oral explanations for more than a few minutes at a time. They are failures, but not because they are stupid. They are failures because there is a media war going on, and they are on the wrong side -- at least for the moment. Who knows what schools will be like twenty-five years from now? Or fifty? In time, the type of student who is currently a failure may be considered a success. They type who is now successful may be regarded as a handicapped learner -- slow to respond, far too detached, lacking in emotion, inadequate in creating mental pictures of reality. Consider: what Thamus called the "conceit of wisdom" -- the unreal knowledge acquired through the written word -- eventually became the pre-eminent form of knowledge valued by the schools. There is no reason to suppose that such a form of knowledge must always remain so highly valued.

To take another example: In introducing the personal computer to the classroom, we shall be breaking a four-hundred year-old truce between the gregariousness and openness fostered by orality and the introspection and isolation fostered by the printed word. Orality stresses group learning, cooperation, and a sense of social responsibility.... Print stresses individualized learning, competition, and personal autonomy. Over four centuries, teachers, while emphasizing print, have allowed orality its place in the classroom, and have therefore achieved a kind of pedagogical peace between these two forms of learning, so that what is valuable in each can be maximized. Now comes the computer, carrying anew the banner of private learning and individual problem-solving. Will the widespread use of computers in the classroom defeat once and for all the claims of communal speech? Will the computer raise egocentrism to the status of a virtue?

These are the kinds of questions that technological change brings to mind when one grasps ... that technological competition ignites total war, which means it is not possible to contain the effects of a new technology to a limited sphere of human activity....

What we need to consider about the computer has nothing to do with its efficiency as a teaching tool. We need to know in what ways it is altering our conception of learning, and how, in conjunction with television, it undermines the old idea of school.

This page is part of the article, "E-literacies: Politexts, Hypertexts and Other Cultural Formations in th e Late Age of Print."

Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology
by Neil Postman

(Vintage Books, 222 pages, paperback)

Neil Postman is one of North America's most visible and accessable cultural critics. In his 1992 book Technopoly, Postman attempts to build an alternate historical and cultural analysis of the effects of technology on western culture. For Postman, it is just as important (or more so) to consider what society loses from the implementation of new technology as to celebrate what it gains. To illustrate his point, Postman uses an excerpt from Egyptian mythology entitled "The Judgement of Thamus." In this story, King Thamus evaluates the invention of writing, and concludes that writing's effect on Egyptian civilization was to decrease the level of knowledge and wisdom in society:

Those who acquire it will cease to excercise their memory and become forgetful; they will rely on writing to bring things to their remembrance by external signs instead of by their own internal resources. [Writing] is a receipt for recollection, not for memory. And as for wisdom, your pupils will have the reputation for it without the reality: they will receive a quantity of information without proper instruction, and in consequence be thought very knowledgeable when they for the most part are quite ignorant. (p. 4)

Postman then proceeds to build his thesis with a detailed account of the history of Western science. The central concept of his text is to trace the roots of Technopoly, which is Postman's catch-phrase for a society where technology and science dictate the moral and philosophical attitude, instead of a social order such as government or the church.

One of the most frustrating aspects of reading Postman is his insistence on viewing the past through rose-coloured glasses. While Technopoly starts as an interesting critical account of the history of technology, it inevitably ends up with Postman glorifying his favourite time period (the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries) and lamenting the passing of an enlightened, educated democratic society. That his view of the past is certainly an over-generalization based on the works of a priviliged intellectual class is never mentioned. Postman also offers a well-meaning attempt at offering remedies to the biases of Technopoly at the end of the book. However, these partial solutions (reformation of the educational system) do not address the systemic root causes of the technocratic order (the supremacy of the (im)morality of capitalism). For a book with such a desperate need to criticize our technophilic society, the timid tenor of the countermeasures offered (read more Shakespeare, Dickens and Yeats?) is surprising and somewhat naive.

Then again, Postman is hardly a radical; he's just a "typographic man" caught inside a whirlwind of change. Technopoly is recommended reading for its depth of viewpoints and cultural references, not to mention Postman's admittedly lucid writing style. But for every insight that he nails on the head, there's another which misses the mark completely (arguing that there are no great "computerers" like there are great painters or musicians; how about computer programmers, or artists and musicians who use computers?). For these reasons, Postman is worthwhile reading to stimulate thought about current issues in technology; however, because of his quaint biases, the amount of wisdom contained in his works is arguable.

Media guru says computers isolate people

by Bonnie Dhall

The advent of required computer learning has dawned at the California State University system with the chancellor's March 6 approval of the Assured Access pilot program.

The program, which SF State has not joined yet, requires all incoming freshmen to own or have access to a computer on participating campuses.

The impetus for the program is that information literacy skills translate into jobs for graduates. "It's simply a question of what is the investment required and what is the pay back on that investment," said Mark Resmer, associate vice president of information technology at Sonoma State, who took the lead in developing the program. But it may not be so simple.

"For me, computers in learning are a problem and not something to celebrate," said America's media guru Neil Postman, who took up where Marshall McLuhan left off in the field of communications.

"I like to use the analogy of the automobile," said Postman, speaking from his office at New York University where he is the chair of the department of Culture and Communications.

With the automobile, we concentrated on teaching people how to drive, said Postman, and instead we should have been asking what will be the impact of the automobile on our lives, our family, our society.

"We were victimized because we did not address these issues," Postman said.

"Every technology has built in biases," said Postman. "The strongest bias of this new technology is toward isolating the individual."

"Computers are OK, but I think they take away from the person's spirit, their individuality," said SF State senior Roy Martinez. He said, "People need to relate in other ways, not just with computers, do you know what I mean?"

The point about interacting with classmates and professor's was brought up by students over and over again at the open forums and meetings held at Sonoma State to debate the Assured Access program, Kate Kauffman said. Kauffman, editor of the campus newspaper, the Sonoma State Star, covered many of those meetings.

A prominent critic of politics and power, and a media critic in his own right, Noam Chomsky said people should develop independent minds and not stay isolated, because that's how the state controls.

Speaking from his office at The Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he has pursued his studies in linguistics since 1955, Chomsky reflected on the advent of the computer age and whether the technological revolution was a prelude to an Orwellian "big brother" society.

"I think that the isolating effect of the new technology is a very serious problem. A lot of people don't agree with me about that," said Chomsky. "I mean there are a lot of advantages to it, it also puts people in contact with one another, but it also isolates people and I'm worried about that. I mean we're human beings, we're not martians and face-to-face contact means something," Chomsky said.

Clifford Stoll is one who "profoundly disagrees" with Chomsky. Stoll, an "Internet hero," who first gained notoriety by tracking down a German spy ring operating on the 'net and then writing about it in his first book, "The Cuckoo's Egg," has been in the news lately discussing his new book "Silicon Snake Oil."

Stoll said he never fears an Orwellian "l984." "Huxley built a better model in "Brave New World,"" said Stoll.

Stoll has had second thoughts on the information highway. His new book critiques the new technology he was once an early proponent of.

"It's not like "big brother" controls us," Stoll said. "Rather the means of communication are filled with the trite information of sitcoms, rather than anything worthy of deep thought. It's even worse than TV."

And Stoll should know. He has been on the Internet since l974, when it was called the Arpanet. Stoll said he got a lot of his ideas about the new technology from reading Neil Postman's books.

SF State Computer Science Department Chair Gerald Eisman said he disagrees with Chomsky, too. Eisman said the new technology empowers people to have a voice.

"The hacker community thinks of themselves as the last of the libertarian's, the last bastion of American independence, because they are putting into people's hands an opportunity for a voice," said Eisman.

Eisman has his own utopian dream of how the new technology will improve our lives.

"I think there will be offices in neighborhoods with work services and support technology. It will be a shared work space with people working from all over," said Eisman. "Imagine what will happen. You can go home for lunch, walk to work, interact more with your family and friends," Eisman said.

"When I hear this, that computer technology will allow us to vote at, shop at, make friends at, home," said Neil Postman, "a chill goes down my spine."

Calling the new technology, "a prescription for the end of community life as we know it," Postman said he was in absolute agreement with Chomsky.

"Using personal computers in schools," said Postman, "will emphasize the individual and not social cohesion." Postman said one of the most important functions of a school in the education process is to teach people how to interact socially with others.

Stoll had his own take on computers in school and said to quote from his new book on this. "What exactly is being taught using computers?," asks Stoll. "On the surface, a student is learning how to read and type and use programs. I'll bet that they're really learning something else."

"Kids learn to stare at a monitor for hours on end. How to accept what a machine says without arguing. That the world is a passive, preprogrammed place, where one click on the mouse gets the right answer. They're learning transitory and shallow relationships from instant e-mail. That discipline isn't necessary when they can zap frustrations with a keystroke. That grammar, analytic thought, and human interactions don't matter," writes Stoll.

"I want our students to control the way it is changing society," said SF State Professor Elizabeth Sommers.

Sommers teaches the NEXA 365 class called Convergent Computer Research. In the course Sommers discusses many of the ideas put forth in this article, along with teaching students how to use computer tools such as the Internet. Sommers posed a question she said we need to ask. Is the technology controlling us, or are we controlling the technology?

"That is a very good question," said Neil Postman.

Five Things We Need to Know About Technological Change Neil Postman Denver, Colorado, March 27, 1998 Good morning your Eminences and Excellencies, ladies, and gentlemen. The theme of this conference, "The New Technologies and the Human Person: Communicating the Faith in the New Millennium," suggests, of course, that you are concerned about what might happen to faith in the new millennium, as well you should be. In addition to our computers, which are close to having a nervous breakdown in anticipation of the year 2000, there is a great deal of frantic talk about the 21st century and how it will pose for us unique problems of which we know very little but for which, nonetheless, we are supposed to carefully prepare. Everyone seems to worry about this--business people, politicians, educators, as well as theologians. At the risk of sounding patronizing, may I try to put everyone's mind at ease? I doubt that the 21st century will pose for us problems that are more stunning, disorienting or complex than those we faced in this century, or the 19th, 18th, 17th, or for that matter, many of the centuries before that. But for those who are excessively nervous about the new millennium, I can provide, right at the start, some good advice about how to confront it. The advice comes from people whom we can trust, and whose thoughtfulness, it's safe to say, exceeds that of President Clinton, Newt Gingrich, or even Bill Gates. Here is what Henry David Thoreau told us: "All our inventions are but improved means to an unimproved end." Here is what Goethe told us: "One should, each day, try to hear a little song, read a good poem, see a fine picture, and, if possible, speak a few reasonable words." Socrates told us: "The unexamined life is not worth living." Rabbi Hillel told us: "What is hateful to thee, do not do to another." And here is the prophet Micah: "What does the Lord require of thee but to do justly, to love mercy and to walk humbly with thy God." And I could say, if we had the time, (although you know it well enough) what Jesus, Isaiah, Mohammad, Spinoza, and Shakespeare told us. It is all the same: There is no escaping from ourselves. The human dilemma is as it has always been, and it is a delusion to believe that the technological changes of our era have rendered irrelevant the wisdom of the ages and the sages. Nonetheless, having said this, I know perfectly well that because we do live in a technological age, we have some special problems that Jesus, Hillel, Socrates, and Micah did not and could not speak of. I do not have the wisdom to say what we ought to do about such problems, and so my contribution must confine itself to some things we need to know in order to address the problems. I call my talk Five Things We Need to Know About Technological Change. I base these ideas on my thirty years of studying the history of technological change but I do not think these are academic or esoteric ideas. They are to the sort of things everyone who is concerned with cultural stability and balance should know and I offer them to you in the hope that you will find them useful in thinking about the effects of technology on religious faith. First Idea The first idea is that all technological change is a trade-off. I like to call it a Faustian bargain. Technology giveth and technology taketh away. This means that for every advantage a new technology offers, there is always a corresponding disadvantage. The disadvantage may exceed in importance the advantage, or the advantage may well be worth the cost. Now, this may seem to be a rather obvious idea, but you would be surprised at how many people believe that new technologies are unmixed blessings. You need only think of the enthusiasms with which most people approach their understanding of computers. Ask anyone who knows something about computers to talk about them, and you will find that they will, unabashedly and relentlessly, extol the wonders of computers. You will also find that in most cases they will completely neglect to mention any of the liabilities of computers. This is a dangerous imbalance, since the greater the wonders of a technology, the greater will be its negative consequences. Think of the automobile, which for all of its obvious advantages, has poisoned our air, choked our cities, and degraded the beauty of our natural landscape. Or you might reflect on the paradox of medical technology which brings wondrous cures but is, at the same time, a demonstrable cause of certain diseases and disabilities, and has played a significant role in reducing the diagnostic skills of physicians. It is also well to recall that for all of the intellectual and social benefits provided by the printing press, its costs were equally monumental. The printing press gave the Western world prose, but it made poetry into an exotic and elitist form of communication. It gave us inductive science, but it reduced religious sensibility to a form of fanciful superstition. Printing gave us the modern conception of nationhood, but in so doing turned patriotism into a sordid if not lethal emotion. We might even say that the printing of the Bible in vernacular languages introduced the impression that God was an Englishman or a German or a Frenchman--that is to say, printing reduced God to the dimensions of a local potentate. Perhaps the best way I can express this idea is to say that the question, "What will a new technology do?" is no more important than the question, "What will a new technology undo?" Indeed, the latter question is more important, precisely because it is asked so infrequently. One might say, then, that a sophisticated perspective on technological change includes one's being skeptical of Utopian and Messianic visions drawn by those who have no sense of history or of the precarious balances on which culture depends. In fact, if it were up to me, I would forbid anyone from talking about the new information technologies unless the person can demonstrate that he or she knows something about the social and psychic effects of the alphabet, the mechanical clock, the printing press, and telegraphy. In other words, knows something about the costs of great technologies. Idea Number One, then, is that culture always pays a price for technology. Second Idea This leads to the second idea, which is that the advantages and disadvantages of new technologies are never distributed evenly among the population. This means that every new technology benefits some and harms others. There are even some who are not affected at all. Consider again the case of the printing press in the 16th century, of which Martin Luther said it was "God's highest and extremest act of grace, whereby the business of the gospel is driven forward." By placing the word of God on every Christian's kitchen table, the mass-produced book undermined the authority of the church hierarchy, and hastened the breakup of the Holy Roman See. The Protestants of that time cheered this development. The Catholics were enraged and distraught. Since I am a Jew, had I lived at that time, I probably wouldn't have given a damn one way or another, since it would make no difference whether a pogrom was inspired by Martin Luther or Pope Leo X. Some gain, some lose, a few remain as they were. Let us take as another example, television, although here I should add at once that in the case of television there are very few indeed who are not affected in one way or another. In America, where television has taken hold more deeply than anywhere else, there are many people who find it a blessing, not least those who have achieved high-paying, gratifying careers in television as executives, technicians, directors, newscasters and entertainers. On the other hand, and in the long run, television may bring an end to the careers of school teachers since school was an invention of the printing press and must stand or fall on the issue of how much importance the printed word will have in the future. There is no chance, of course, that television will go away but school teachers who are enthusiastic about its presence always call to my mind an image of some turn-of-the-century blacksmith who not only is singing the praises of the automobile but who also believes that his business will be enhanced by it. We know now that his business was not enhanced by it; it was rendered obsolete by it, as perhaps an intelligent blacksmith would have known. The questions, then, that are never far from the mind of a person who is knowledgeable about technological change are these: Who specifically benefits from the development of a new technology? Which groups, what type of person, what kind of industry will be favored? And, of course, which groups of people will thereby be harmed? These questions should certainly be on our minds when we think about computer technology. There is no doubt that the computer has been and will continue to be advantageous to large-scale organizations like the military or airline companies or banks or tax collecting institutions. And it is equally clear that the computer is now indispensable to high-level researchers in physics and other natural sciences. But to what extent has computer technology been an advantage to the masses of people? To steel workers, vegetable store owners, automobile mechanics, musicians, bakers, bricklayers, dentists, yes, theologians, and most of the rest into whose lives the computer now intrudes? These people have had their private matters made more accessible to powerful institutions. They are more easily tracked and controlled; they are subjected to more examinations, and are increasingly mystified by the decisions made about them. They are more than ever reduced to mere numerical objects. They are being buried by junk mail. They are easy targets for advertising agencies and political institutions. In a word, these people are losers in the great computer revolution. The winners, which include among others computer companies, multi-national corporations and the nation state, will, of course, encourage the losers to be enthusiastic about computer technology. That is the way of winners, and so in the beginning they told the losers that with personal computers the average person can balance a checkbook more neatly, keep better track of recipes, and make more logical shopping lists. Then they told them that computers will make it possible to vote at home, shop at home, get all the entertainment they wish at home, and thus make community life unnecessary. And now, of course, the winners speak constantly of the Age of Information, always implying that the more information we have, the better we will be in solving significant problems--not only personal ones but large-scale social problems, as well. But how true is this? If there are children starving in the world--and there are--it is not because of insufficient information. We have known for a long time how to produce enough food to feed every child on the planet. How is it that we let so many of them starve? If there is violence on our streets, it is not because we have insufficient information. If women are abused, if divorce and pornography and mental illness are increasing, none of it has anything to do with insufficient information. I dare say it is because something else is missing, and I don't think I have to tell this audience what it is. Who knows? This age of information may turn out to be a curse if we are blinded by it so that we cannot see truly where our problems lie. That is why it is always necessary for us to ask of those who speak enthusiastically of computer technology, why do you do this? What interests do you represent? To whom are you hoping to give power? From whom will you be withholding power? I do not mean to attribute unsavory, let alone sinister motives to anyone. I say only that since technology favors some people and harms others, these are questions that must always be asked. And so, that there are always winners and losers in technological change is the second idea. Third Idea Here is the third. Embedded in every technology there is a powerful idea, sometimes two or three powerful ideas. These ideas are often hidden from our view because they are of a somewhat abstract nature. But this should not be taken to mean that they do not have practical consequences. Perhaps you are familiar with the old adage that says: To a man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail. We may extend that truism: To a person with a pencil, everything looks like a sentence. To a person with a TV camera, everything looks like an image. To a person with a computer, everything looks like data. I do not think we need to take these aphorisms literally. But what they call to our attention is that every technology has a prejudice. Like language itself, it predisposes us to favor and value certain perspectives and accomplishments. In a culture without writing, human memory is of the greatest importance, as are the proverbs, sayings and songs which contain the accumulated oral wisdom of centuries. That is why Solomon was thought to be the wisest of men. In Kings I we are told he knew 3,000 proverbs. But in a culture with writing, such feats of memory are considered a waste of time, and proverbs are merely irrelevant fancies. The writing person favors logical organization and systematic analysis, not proverbs. The telegraphic person values speed, not introspection. The television person values immediacy, not history. And computer people, what shall we say of them? Perhaps we can say that the computer person values information, not knowledge, certainly not wisdom. Indeed, in the computer age, the concept of wisdom may vanish altogether. The third idea, then, is that every technology has a philosophy which is given expression in how the technology makes people use their minds, in what it makes us do with our bodies, in how it codifies the world, in which of our senses it amplifies, in which of our emotional and intellectual tendencies it disregards. This idea is the sum and substance of what the great Catholic prophet, Marshall McLuhan meant when he coined the famous sentence, "The medium is the message." Fourth Idea Here is the fourth idea: Technological change is not additive; it is ecological. I can explain this best by an analogy. What happens if we place a drop of red dye into a beaker of clear water? Do we have clear water plus a spot of red dye? Obviously not. We have a new coloration to every molecule of water. That is what I mean by ecological change. A new medium does not add something; it changes everything. In the year 1500, after the printing press was invented, you did not have old Europe plus the printing press. You had a different Europe. After television, America was not America plus television. Television gave a new coloration to every political campaign, to every home, to every school, to every church, to every industry, and so on. That is why we must be cautious about technological innovation. The consequences of technological change are always vast, often unpredictable and largely irreversible. That is also why we must be suspicious of capitalists. Capitalists are by definition not only personal risk takers but, more to the point, cultural risk takers. The most creative and daring of them hope to exploit new technologies to the fullest, and do not much care what traditions are overthrown in the process or whether or not a culture is prepared to function without such traditions. Capitalists are, in a word, radicals. In America, our most significant radicals have always been capitalists--men like Bell, Edison, Ford, Carnegie, Sarnoff, Goldwyn. These men obliterated the 19th century, and created the 20th, which is why it is a mystery to me that capitalists are thought to be conservative. Perhaps it is because they are inclined to wear dark suits and grey ties. I trust you understand that in saying all this, I am making no argument for socialism. I say only that capitalists need to be carefully watched and disciplined. To be sure, they talk of family, marriage, piety, and honor but if allowed to exploit new technology to its fullest economic potential, they may undo the institutions that make such ideas possible. And here I might just give two examples of this point, taken from the American encounter with technology. The first concerns education. Who, we may ask, has had the greatest impact on American education in this century? If you are thinking of John Dewey or any other education philosopher, I must say you are quite wrong. The greatest impact has been made by quiet men in grey suits in a suburb of New York City called Princeton, New Jersey. There, they developed and promoted the technology known as the standardized test, such as IQ tests, the SATs and the GREs. Their tests redefined what we mean by learning, and have resulted in our reorganizing the curriculum to accommodate the tests. A second example concerns our politics. It is clear by now that the people who have had the most radical effect on American politics in our time are not political ideologues or student protesters with long hair and copies of Karl Marx under their arms. The radicals who have changed the nature of politics in America are entrepreneurs in dark suits and grey ties who manage the large television industry in America. They did not mean to turn political discourse into a form of entertainment. They did not mean to make it impossible for an overweight person to run for high political office. They did not mean to reduce political campaigning to a 30-second TV commercial. All they were trying to do is to make television into a vast and unsleeping money machine. That they destroyed substantive political discourse in the process does not concern them. Fifth Idea I come now to the fifth and final idea, which is that media tend to become mythic. I use this word in the sense in which it was used by the French literary critic, Roland Barthes. He used the word "myth" to refer to a common tendency to think of our technological creations as if they were God-given, as if they were a part of the natural order of things. I have on occasion asked my students if they know when the alphabet was invented. The question astonishes them. It is as if I asked them when clouds and trees were invented. The alphabet, they believe, was not something that was invented. It just is. It is this way with many products of human culture but with none more consistently than technology. Cars, planes, TV, movies, newspapers--they have achieved mythic status because they are perceived as gifts of nature, not as artifacts produced in a specific political and historical context. When a technology become mythic, it is always dangerous because it is then accepted as it is, and is therefore not easily susceptible to modification or control. If you should propose to the average American that television broadcasting should not begin until 5 PM and should cease at 11 PM, or propose that there should be no television commercials, he will think the idea ridiculous. But not because he disagrees with your cultural agenda. He will think it ridiculous because he assumes you are proposing that something in nature be changed; as if you are suggesting that the sun should rise at 10 AM instead of at 6. Whenever I think about the capacity of technology to become mythic, I call to mind the remark made by Pope John Paul II. He said, "Science can purify religion from error and superstition. Religion can purify science from idolatry and false absolutes." What I am saying is that our enthusiasm for technology can turn into a form of idolatry and our belief in its beneficence can be a false absolute. The best way to view technology is as a strange intruder, to remember that technology is not part of God's plan but a product of human creativity and hubris, and that its capacity for good or evil rests entirely on human awareness of what it does for us and to us. Conclusion And so, these are my five ideas about technological change. First, that we always pay a price for technology; the greater the technology, the greater the price. Second, that there are always winners and losers, and that the winners always try to persuade the losers that they are really winners. Third, that there is embedded in every great technology an epistemological, political or social prejudice. Sometimes that bias is greatly to our advantage. Sometimes it is not. The printing press annihilated the oral tradition; telegraphy annihilated space; television has humiliated the word; the computer, perhaps, will degrade community life. And so on. Fourth, technological change is not additive; it is ecological, which means, it changes everything and is, therefore, too important to be left entirely in the hands of Bill Gates. And fifth, technology tends to become mythic; that is, perceived as part of the natural order of things, and therefore tends to control more of our lives than is good for us. If we had more time, I could supply some additional important things about technological change but I will stand by these for the moment, and will close with this thought. In the past, we experienced technological change in the manner of sleep-walkers. Our unspoken slogan has been "technology über alles," and we have been willing to shape our lives to fit the requirements of technology, not the requirements of culture. This is a form of stupidity, especially in an age of vast technological change. We need to proceed with our eyes wide open so that we many use technology rather than be used by it.

Danielle Viglione
5-1-96
Tonya Browning
 

Neil Postman, writer, educator, critic and communications theorist, has written many books, in addition to his recent book Technopoly. He is one of America's biggest and most visible cultural critics, who attempts to analyze culture and history in terms of the effects of technology on western culture. For Postman, it seems more important to consider what society loses from new technology than what it gains. To illustrate this, Postman uses the Egyptian mythology called "The Judgment of Thamus," which attempts to explain how the development of writing in Egyptian civilization decreases the amount of knowledge and wisdom in the society. He traces the roots of technology to show how technology impacts the moral and intellectual attitude of people. Postman seems to criticize societies with high technologies, yet he seems naive to the benefits technology has given society. Postman is a man who is caught in a changing world of technology who can be considered fairly conservative in his views regarding technology. His lucid writing style stimulates thoughts on issues in today's technological society; however because of his moral interpretations and historical revisions, his ethos is arguable. For every good insight he makes, he skips another mark completely.

Postman divides history into three types. He begins his argument with discussion of tool-using cultures. In these cultures, technology has an "ideological bias" to action that is not thought about by users. He says that this is a time of "logic, sequence, objectivity, detachment, and discipline," where historical figures such as Galileo, Copernicus, Kepler, and others clung to the theology of their age. This was a world with God, which was concerned with truth and not power. Postman remarks that the mass production of books and the invention of the printing press places "the word of God on every kitchen table." These technological advances made possible the sharing of information, which Postman seems to think is good. Even though this was not an age of technical power, it still can be considered an age of power. There were many great rulers who sat at the top of a hierarchy and controlled the lives of the powerless, the peasants, and the impoverished. Postman describes this culture in a positive way because he feels there was no concern with the idea of progress, yet he fails to touch upon the negative aspects of society. During the Medieval times, peasants were poor and had a slim chance to move up in the hierarchical structure of during this time. Their lives were controlled by people that were born wealthy and very rarely did their children have better lives than their parents. During the Industrial Revolution, " new machines, new sources of power, and new ways of organizing work transformed the United States from an agricultural nation to an industrial power" (Lubar). Postman fails to mention how people of different skill, ethnicity, race, and gender were treated poorly during this time of heavy manual labor and repetitious factory work. Large corporations dominated much of the American Industry and many industrial workers called for social justice through organizations and trade unions. Postman could have strengthened his argument by acknowledging women throughout the book. Women, as well as blacks and poor people, were not treated fairly due to the increase in technology. Women fought for women's rights, and blacks fought to improve their lifestyles and to gain freedom. During this time, there was little effort by the government to help these people. " A large majority of African Americans, blue collar workers, and urban poor remained untouched by federal assistance programs" (Mack, 423). The emphasis was on efficiency rather than humanity. Women were not equal to men and blacks were treated differently than whites. During this age of massive production, women and children were forced to work long hours with little pay. Blacks did not run factories or corporations, but they did much manual labor and factory work for white men. The creation of new technologies allowed women , children, and blacks to live better lives because they created less of a demand for manual labor and factory work. Machines, such as computers could now do the tedious and repetitious work people once had to do.

This society laid the foundation for the emergence of technocracies, even though they were men, not women, of tool- using cultures. Technocracies developed because of the increase of knowledge and technology. People of this age want new technologies, but realize that the life of one person is just as meaningful as another, that humans can progress, and that poverty is evil. Bacon was a man of this age who tried to increase human condition and make people happier. Postman agrees with John Brown's thoughts regarding this new technocracy. Brown says, " If you at last must have a word to say, say neither, in the way, it is dealt magic and accursed, nor it is blest, but only it is here" (39). Technocracies can become dangerous when people forget what technology was good for in the first place. Postman is correct in saying that technologies can be dangerous. The invention of the nuclear bomb could completely destroy the population. The crime in the United States has risen because of the creation guns and other weapons. Homicide and suicide have increased dramatically over the past few decades. Gangs use weapons to kill each other and other innocent people. Ford's invention of the automobile creates concern for pollution problems. Mistakes can be made during operations, which could be dangerous to the patient. Instead of spending more money and effort to develop a cure for cancer, people are using billions of dollars to fly people to the moon. Postman makes good insights regarding technology, yet he fails to show how the advances of technology have helped the people whose lives depend on technology. New methods help surgeons save people during operations. Computers help organizations and facilities to research and keep records, and they make people's jobs a lot less repetitious. The invention of the printer allows people to make several copies within minutes.

In order for a technocracy to become a technopoly, a whole technological mindset must develop. According to Postman, " Technology flourishes when the defenses against technology break down" ( 71). People become conceived of markets and not citizens who are concerned with "objective, efficient, expertise, and standardization " ( 42). The defenses are the erosion of spiritual values and the common high philosophies. According to Baldwin's assessment of Postman's work, technology has over run society. Postman describes technopoly as a "totalitarian technocracy." It redefines what people mean "by religion, by art, by family, by politics, by history, by truth, by privacy, by intelligence, so that our definitions fit it's new requirements" ( 48). He explains that two different thought worlds of tradition and technology coexist, while tradition slowly becomes irrelevant and invisible. Whether tradition and technology coexist may be arguable. In the past, these two thought worlds were never married. Even though Greece develop a extensive writing style using many symbols, they still highly valued their rhetoric skills.

Throughout the book, Postman attempts to show that created technopolies are far from democracies. In a democracy, power is shared; however, in a technopoly, the power rests with the elite. Postman seems more negative than positive toward technopolies because he is one of the many people left out of newer technologies. He does not have the skills of the elite; therefore he cannot understand the thought world of technology, only of the tradition world. According to Ravvin, Postman says that "doctors are performing unnecessary operations because technology is available. Politicians conduct their affairs on the basis of polls, TV programs are good because of their rating, and computers have led to the redefinition of humans as information processors and nature itself as information to be progressed" (Ravvin). America has been transformed into a world of symbols that are used to get information. Postman seems to think that symbols destroy society, even though symbols have made society more efficient and productive. Voting polls produce an efficient, a quick, and a confidential way of voting. The development of checks and credit cards allow people carry single items, rather than carrying loads of cash. The Internet can help students research information while sitting in one place, rather than wondering around the library. Code words associated with computers help keep people's work confidential.

Throughout the book, Postman seems to predict doom in an America experiencing a down period. The technopolies emerged due to the American character, the exploitation of economic possibilities by American capitalists, the emphasis of alternatives, and the deviation from old beliefs. Postman explains that the American character has been reshaped by the new technologies. American ways may have changed because of new technology that allows them to do new tasks, but the character has not been reshaped. People want to conquer the environment to conquer disease by using technology as a weapon to decrease disease and illness. Postman seems to think this destroys humanity, yet these new technologies have decreased mortality rates and leave people feeling less pain. According to Postman, the stethoscope created an objective physician who was concerned less with the patient, but more with sounds from the body of the patient. Medicine takes care of disease, not the patient. This one- sided argument does not consider the obvious advances that technology has brought to society. By taking care of disease, physicians take care of the patient. Medical advances have treated Polio, Mumps, and many other diseases that there were no cure for years ago. Now, modern medicine can prevent people from dying from many infectious diseases. Postman's argument does not acknowledge the distinction between physicians and researchers. Advance in research does not hurt people, rather it helps them. Physicians can become more reliable due to new technological advances. The stethoscope helps determine a patient's health; therefore, it can make the doctor more reliable.

Another way technopolies emerge is through the exploitation of economic possibilities by capitalists. With Ford's invention of the automobile, America provided people with alternative a way of getting around. Postman thinks that by using alternative ways to the past people lose a sense of history and tradition. According to Postman, people would rather watch TV than read. Families would rather move than cling to family roots. Just because people spend more time watching TV does not mean that they still don't take as much pride in the old alternatives. Old beliefs change through technology because people now think airplanes fly, radios speak, and computers never make mistakes. When people begin to believe technology is the sure thing, they distance themselves from traditional ways of thinking for no other reason than to make themselves happier and more productive. Although Postman claims that relying on technology is detrimental to society, he does not mention how much happier people and more efficient people have become due to advances in technology. The invention of the automobile gave people a faster and more efficient way of traveling, while the invention of the plane made travel even more efficient than cars.

Lastly, technopolies emerge by losing old beliefs and values. Postman believes a technopoly can be held in check by revitalizing the traditional narratives about family, religion, and western culture, but he never offers any solutions to revitalizing society. He thinks that a new education curriculum should have the idea of the ascent of humanity as its key principle. Every teacher must be a history teacher; every school should offer courses in philosophy of science and semantics; the curriculum must contain both the history of technology, a course in comparative religion, and a course in the historical study of art. These proposals suggest some interesting points, but they also illustrate that Postman is armed with less problems than solutions. New technologies are competing with old ones for time, money, prestige, and for a world view. Technology has taken control of students minds. Because of technology, he calls students failures or uneducated, not because they are stupid, but because of the war that puts the two world views of tradition and technology in conflict. He states;

I am referring to the idea that to become educated means to become aware of the origins and growth of knowledge and knowledge systems; to be familiar with the intellectual and creative processes by which the best that has been thought and said has been produced; to learn how to participate, even if as a listener, in what Robert Maynard Hutchins once called the Great Conversation, which is merely a different metaphor for what is meant by the ascent of humanity. It is education as an excellent corrective to the antihistorical, information-saturated, technology- loving character of Technopoly ( 188).

Postman stimulates the thought process with his definition of education, but he never explains how people should progress in schools. He attempts to explain why society should proceed, but never attacks the question of how people should do it. Perhaps, more time should be spent on specific subjects, instead of requiring students to take many classes that are unrelated to each other. Students majoring in history should not have to take many math or science classes. Students need to learn more about the technologies available to them, so they will have a balance between technology and tradition. People should be taught to view the world from a technological standpoint to understand what technology can do for them. If Postman would have been educated in this area, he could have presented a more well- rounded argument by looking at technology in society from a technological perspective.

In technopoly, people improve the education of the youth by improving what are called "learning technologies." Now, it seems necessary to bring computers into the classroom, just as it was to introduce writing and later film to the classroom. In order to make learning more efficient and more interesting, people need computers. This technical reason does not explain what learning is for and offers an answer about means, not ends. This shows how people should proceed, not why. Postman believes that bringing the computer to the classroom individualizes students. Computers stand in opposition to human affairs and is a dangerous weapon used in technology. Postman argues that humanity and tradition are lost through the use of computers. " Because of what computers do, they place an inordinate emphasis on the technical processes of communications and offer very little in the way of substance. The computer is almost all process. There are, for example, no great computers, as there are great writers, painters, or musicians" ( 118). This example sparks thought, but could be an inaccurate characterization. According to Kaplan, there are no great brushers or pencilers either. A computer programmer and creator must be just as talented at making computers as a painter must be at painting pictures. Teachers may use computer programs instead of pencils and papers. These machines help people develop equations for the problem, then people decide how to solve them. Computers may introduce new ways, but Postman cannot just blame the destruction of tradition on Technopolies. No one predicted that computers would be able to do so much. The first personal computer was not used until 1984 and was not expected to be used by the large population today.

Although Postman blames computers and technology for destroying some of humanity, he fails to explain how to recover the traditions of humanity he feels are lost. "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 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" (71). Throughout the book, he continues to analyze what technology has done to society, but never considers the option for recovering these beliefs. It seems he has given up in a world of technology that is over his head in information and knowledge. He says that information is dangerous when " it has no place to go, when there is no theory to which it applies, no pattern in which it fits, when there is no higher purpose that it serves" ( 63). Information may seem dangerous to him and many others who are unfamiliar with modern day technology, but for people who's lives highly depend on technology, information poses no threat. Rather, it is a needed tool for them to live happily and survive. Postman and others not involved in the technological society may need to be loving resistance fighters in order to be happy and keep the traditions and beliefs they feel are important. For other people highly involved with technology, traditional values are not lost. The beliefs may not be as important to these people as they are to Postman.

In conclusion, Postman offers an alternate historical and cultural analysis of the effects of technology on western culture; however, he writes the book from only his perspective. He leaves out what the technological advanced people may believe and presents one perspective, which does not offer a balanced persuasive argument. Postman seems to focus more on what society loses from technology than on what it gains. Postman is not part of modern technologies; therefore he seems naive. "For such a book with such a desperate need to criticize our technophilic society, the timid tenor of the countermeasures offered is surprisingly and somewhat naive" ( Anthony Hempell). When he discusses the past, he fails to mention negative aspects of society that have improved in the present. Women, children, and blacks are treated better and have access to the same technologies as white men. He leaves out many ways advancements have decreased mortality rates. Today, people are not dying of diseases that were fatal in the past. He expresses many problems for society because of the increases in technology, but offers no solutions. He never explains how to help children progress in schools and he does not offer any way to recover the traditions he feels are lost. Instead of blaming technology for the loss of tradition and humanity, Postman should offer the technological society ways to deal with the problems he has complained about. People of the technological world may have lost some of the past traditions and may seem naive to the society Postman is familiar with; however Postman is naive to the technological world they are familiar with. He travels down a one way street; never looking back to acknowledge other perspectives, except for his own.
 

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