It is difficult, if not impossible, stray too far into the literature of contemporary cultural criticism without running headlong into a Neil Postman reference…typically brief, often coated with a benign diplomacy that betrays nothing useful, and sometimes with a tone of sighing obligation. It seems that, like Stanley Fish, Neil Postman is one of that breed of intellectual that takes an almost excessive delight in raining on OTHER people's parades.
I'll admit, as a scholar in my own small right, I felt a bit uncomfortable reading a scholar who…well, deeply questioned whether or not our culture even really understood what "scholarship" really was. (Just read his thoughts on social "science" and the value of "statistics," and you'll understand that last sentence.)
But Postman is not some sociology prof-reject out to right some past tenure-interview-gone-terribly-awry. The project of "Technology" is at once more basic and more profound. Honestly, I found the argument of the book incredibly simple and easy-to-follow: The relationship of humanity to its technologies has passed through two complete evolutionary stages: from tool-using to technocracy and has now entered a third phase that is the title of the book. The issue here is not the development of specific technologies (note the lowercase "t") but a shift in the positioning of Technology (note the capital "T") in relationship to other domains of knowledge. No longer content to coexist with, say, other realms of truth-telling like Religion and Tradition, Technology now threatens to overtake them. As Postman writes:
"Technopoly eliminates alternatives to itself…It does not make them illegal. It does not make them immoral. It does not even make them unpopular. It makes them invisible and therefore irrelevant" (p. 48).
Technopoly is, he summarizes, "totalitarian technocracy." To put his point in more theological terms that I can better grasp, modern Western societies (especially the USA) now have more faith in the promise of Technology than they do in the promise of Humanity. (Faith in the promise of Divinity began its slow fade with the rise of the Enlightenment, but that is a digression from the topic at hand.) The balance has subtly shifted from optimism that WE (Humanity) could shape Technology to meet OUR ends to a new kind of optimism that Technology could rescue/save US from the frightening ends to which we have put it. So, in the Technopolist world, the answer to, say, the threat of nuclear holocaust is—in fact, MUST be—a technological one. Bigger bombs, better defense systems, satellites with lasers…you get the point, I hope.
Postman is not out to destroy Technology; he doesn't promote some impossible return to a pre-technological age. Rather, he wants to break Technology's DOMINATION over other ways and realms of human knowing. Postman simply tries to illuminate Technopoly's slow creep. Ever so subtly, Technology has become the Master and Humanity has assumed the role of servant. Truth is reduced to Data; Wisdom is misidentified as Information. And anything that does not easily convert to a "data-stream" format—any Truth that cannot be spit out as a number in a data table—becomes useless. What makes the effects of Technopoly so insidious is both their subtlety and their pervasiveness. This kind of thinking is literally everywhere, from dating websites that match users based on some system of personality "profiling" to educational assessment strategies that focus on "data-driven decision-making processes" (if I had a dollar for every time I heard THAT phrase at an accreditation conference). And in a Technopoly, the educator doesn't even think to ask: "Why should data be what drives educational decisions?" What a person earns after completing a college degree actually tells you very little about whether or not they are an "educated" person; it's simply a good way for the government to track their ROI on student grants & loans programs, a classically Technopolist concern.
I suppose it feels a bit overblown to describe a book as "revolutionary." And perhaps you will think Postman's work ISN'T that, after all. But it is the closest I'VE come to a "revolutionary" read in the past few years. Postman's problem is not that his observations are off-base; his problem is that they are prophetic…observations that will "take on" meaning and significance as the decades pass. And, unfortunately, as with the observations of most prophets, I fear their truth will recognized by most in society at a point too late to matter.
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A New Age: Technopoly?
Postman, N. (1992). Technopoly: The surrender of culture to technology. Knopf.Neil Postman (1931 — 2003) was an American critic, educator, and writer.Normally a book written in 1992, especially a book about technology would be considered "out of date" but Postman's critiques of and warnings about technological change remain true. Technopoly refers to a totalitarian society demanding "submission of all forms of cultural life to the sovereignty of technique and technology." Postman's concerns: "The uncontrolled growth of technology destroys the vital sources of our humanity. It creates a culture without a moral foundation... undermines certain mental processes and social relations that make human life worth living. Technology. . . is both friend and enemy." He explores tool's historical evolution from tool using to technocracy to technopoly noting how "new technologies alter the structure of our interests, the things we think about." Within technopoly, individual and societal defenses are reduced due to information glut, lack of meaning and truth, and increasing consumption. He explores implications related to use of medical technology and rise in the metaphorical language of machine as human or human as machine. For example, people describing themselves as programmed having a need to deprogram, or as being "hardwired." Trivialization was noted as a concern given how commercial interests "use all available symbols to further the interests of commerce, by devouring the psyches of consumers" and in so doing, symbols are trivialized. Postman urges the reader to assume a "resistance fighter" stance knowing that technology is not value free, not "part of the natural order of things," but puts forth values, assumptions, and an agenda of the creator(s).Postman passed prior to the 2007 release of the i-phone. I find myself wondering what he would say now. For a good companion read, take a look at Jonathan Haidt's The Anxious Generation. So many pros/cons associated with the ubiquitous use of technology and social media.
Top reviews from other countries
Denis
Great read, Neil Postman was a great thinker
Reviewed in Canada on October 16, 2021
Luigi Reyes
Indispensable para comprender nuestra vida actual
Reviewed in Mexico on September 5, 2019