40 pages • 1 hour read
Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology
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The Effect of Technology on Culture
The main theme of the book is the effect that technology has on culture. While Postman focuses on the harmful effects, he emphasizes that no technology is all good or all bad. He begins Chapter 1 with a story about King Thamus, from Plato’s Phaedrus. The king focused on all the negative aspects of technology, but Postman is clear in stating that “Thamus’ error is in his believing that writing will be a burden to society and nothing but a burden” (4). Instead, he writes, “[e]very technology is both a burden and a blessing” (4).
That said, Postman does want readers to view technology with a healthy skepticism. The mistake that society makes is in accepting technology wholeheartedly while not examining its pros and cons carefully enough. New technologies, he writes, fundamentally change cultures in ways that cannot be predicted. Their effect is ecological, not additive, and they create winners and losers in society. This is why it is so important to view them critically and ask about them What are we getting? and What are we giving up? One example offered is that of the mechanical clock, which in Europe was devised by monks to help regulate the schedule of monasteries. It was thus created to serve religion, but a larger impact turned out to be its role in the rise of capitalism, as it was used to regulate workers and production.
He discusses both obvious technology—machines such as computers—and what he calls “invisible technologies.” The latter are techniques like statistics used to control and manipulate information. He examines how technology progresses in cultures, from tool-using to technocracy to Technopoly. The first is using simple tools for a specific, limited purpose. The second makes widespread adoption of technology, which begins to attack the culture. However, technocracies can still exist with the older symbols and narratives of the culture intact, as occurred in the United States in the 19th century. The last stage, Technopoly, is when technology has thoroughly inundated a culture and attempts to control it have failed, which happened to the United States in the 20th century. There is no longer a purpose to the culture other than to further technology.
The Control and Misuse of Information
Another theme of the book is how information is used and controlled. One aspect of Technopoly that Postman describes is information spiraling out of control; it just becomes a glut and overwhelms the system. Society no longer has any way of processing or making sense of it. To try to control it, people turn to technology itself, only worsening the situation by strengthening technology’s grip on the culture—which in turn creates yet more information. This glut of information removes any context that might help in understanding it, freeing information from any useful purpose and allowing it to be just another commodity that can be bought and sold. Information becomes mere trivia, which tends to make it more or less equal rather than prioritize that with greater significance.
Beyond this, however, the author claims that information gets misused. The technique of statistics, which he considers a kind of technology, is important in many ways but has also been “allowed entry to places where it does not belong” (128-29). One such example is the rise of eugenics in the late 19th century, in which statistics were used to prove intelligence (or lack thereof) through physical characteristics. Postman writes that the social sciences also use statistics and mathematics, giving their theories a patina of authority by passing them off as scientific in the same way that the laws of the natural sciences are. He believes this is wrong: because social science theories are not verifiable in the same way; he thus discounts them. Yet institutions and individuals make decisions and arrange their lives with a great faith in the social sciences, even imbuing them with a certain moral authority. All this is based on, in Postman’s view, a misuse of information.
The Role of Education in Society
At the end of the book, Postman offers suggestions for what might help mitigate the effect of technology on society. He concentrates on education, resulting in a third theme of the book. The curriculum he puts forth indicates his view of the role of education in society, especially one heavily dependent on technology. The central, guiding discipline is history. Postman recommends teaching the history of each subject alongside the subject matter. For instance, students should learn the history of math along with mathematical principles, the history of science along with scientific laws, and so on. This shows that all subjects have a history (they are not static collections of facts) and that knowledge forms a continuum. This gives students a connection to the past, an understanding “that everyone stands on someone else’s shoulders” (190).
The purpose of this is to create a curriculum that teaches “the ascent of humanity” (187), that is, “a celebration of human intelligence and creativity, not a meaningless collection of diploma or college requirements” (188). The author wants students to be aware that each discipline has been—and continues to be—a struggle of ideas. Knowledge is thus dynamic and ever creative. Since history would be taught with each subject, Postman suggests that history teachers should then focus on how history is devised, that it consists of different hypotheses and viewpoints. He also advocates teaching the arts, the history and philosophy of science, and the history of religions. In short, “It is education as an excellent corrective to the antihistorical, information-saturated, technology-loving character of Technopoly” (189).
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By Neil Postman
