Technopoly The Surrender of Culture to Technology Neil Postman

Copyright 1992 by Neil Postman. Published by Knopf, New York Synopsis Introduction There are two cultures, and they are opposed to each other: technology and everybody else. Technology is not the benign tool that can be used for good or evil that people generally think. Instead, it attacks and destroys what is vital to our humanity. Technology has what many view as benefits (longer life, easier labor, etc.) and so has been assimilated by our culture in such a way that its long term results are seldom investigated. This book is an attempt to show how technology can be a dangerous enemy. Chapter 1: The Judgment of Thamus Plato's record of Socrates includes a dialogue between Thamus, a king of a city in Egypt, and a god skilled in invention. Thamus was indroduced to an idea called writing that would " improve the memory and wisdom of Egyptians." Thamus replies that writing will not improve memory, for people who use it will become forgetful and will rely on what is written for their memory. Writing will make men knowledgable, but not wise, for they will receive knowledge without proper instruction. They will think they are wiser than they really are, and in their conceit, they will be a burden to society. Thamus is wrong in his pronouncement that technology will be only a burden. Every technology can be a burden and a blessing. However, the loudest proponents of technology fail to recognize this and see only what is potentially good in a technology. Freud says that technology creates the necessity for its own conveniences. We would need no telephone if there were no trains to take people hundreds of miles away. We would need no telegraph if there were no ships for overseas voyages. Hygiene has reduced the infant mortality rate, but people have chosen to have fewer children so than a typical family rears no more children than before. "What good is long life if it is difficult and barren of joys, and if it is so full of misery that we can only welcome death as a deliverer?" Technology is not neutral. "The uses made of a techology are determined by the structure of the technology itself." (p. 7) Technologies can be denied entry into a culture, but once they have entered, they will do all that they have in them to do. They cannot be restrained. Therefore, we must deeply examine any technology before we embrace it. "Radical technologies create new definitions of old terms," and this usually happens without our notice. (p. 8) Thamus feared that wisdom would be confused with knowledge or recollection. Television has altered what is meant by political debate, news, and public opinion. Writing, printing, and television have all changed the meanings of truth and law. (p. 8) A knowledge monopoly is a group who have control over the workings of a technology and they accumulate power and inevitably form a kind of conspiracy against those who have no access to the specialized knowledge made available by the technology. (p. 9) Schoolteachers have had a knowledge monopoly because of the printing press. Televesion seeks to unseat them and form a new knowledge monopoly of sorts, because power is obtained without the knowledge (or perhaps much

of it) that can be gained by the study of books (i.e. enternainers, technicians, executives, etc.). Computers form another sort of monopoly, in which there are winners and losers. Businesses who can make things more quickly, cheaply, or perfectly benefit. Airlines, banks, and scientists all benefit from rapid calculation ability. They are winners. The average person who is treated as a number to be pacified or duped, flooded with junk mail, tracked and controlled, and confused about the decisions made about them and "for" them, is the loser. The winners often expect the losers to cheer for the new technology, and the losers often do, even though their lives are not made substantially better by the technology. The winners often do not realize what is at stake with the change to a new technology, either. This is the case with America, who revels in anything new, blindly beliving that newer is better, especially when it comes to technology and research. ...embedded in every tool is an idealogical bias, a predisposition to construct the world as one thing rather than another, to value one thing over another, to amplify one sense or skill or attitude more loudly than another. (p. 13) 'Theuth, my paragon of inventors, the discoverer of an art is not the best judge of the good or harm which will accrue to those who practice it.' (p. 4) Chapter 2: From Tools to Technocracy There are three types of cultures 1. o o Tool-using cultures tools are used to solve specific problems of physical life tools serve the symbolic worlds: art, politics, myth, ritual, and religion

These culture's tools did not prevent people from believing in religion, politics, education, or legitimacy of their social organization. Their beliefs restricted the uses of the tools and directed their development. They are not necessarily technologically poor and may be quite sophisticated. Theology directed all aspects of life, including the use of tools and their relationship to humans. Examples: Samuri honor governed the use of swords, Pope Innocent II prohibited the use of the lethal crossbow against Christians In the West, three items ushered in Technocracy. o o the machanical clock redefined "time" the printing press attacked the oral tradition

o the telescope attacked the supremecy of Judao-Christian accuracy of describing the universe according to theology Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, Newton, and Descartes prepared the way for Technocracy by unseating theology as the ultimate pursuit of science. Francis Bacon was the first man of the technocratic age. He pursued "the happiness of mankind" and belived that the only real goal of the sciences was to improve the quality of life and wealth of humans. The improvement of man's mind and his condition are one and the same thing. - Francis Bacon (p. 37)

Chapter 3: From Technocracy to Technopoly 2. Technocracies Tools are key to the worldview of the culture. Tools are the most important item in the culture, and all other aspects of culture are secondary in importance. There is a separation of moral and intellectual values in Technocracy. The start of the first Technocracy in England might be either James Watt's steam engine (1765) or Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations(1776). Acquiring wealth became the pursuit of man's efforts. Invention was a pursuit for the sake of making humanity's position better (more wealth, less work, etc.). Progress was important because it made more wealth for the pioneer. Men began inventing things without asking why the things should be invented. Humans were no longer craftsmen, they now tended the machines, who were more important. Men, women, and children worked long hours in dangerous conditions for the sake of the wealth of the few. The machines (and the profit they produced) were more important than humans or an individual's humanity. Technocracies brought into being an increased respect for the average person, whose potential and even convenience became a matter of compelling political interest and urgent social policy. (p. 44) Technocracy began to alter the meaning of humanity. It was a time of tension between age-old definitions of humanity as a creature needing community, purpose, and labor and the new, selfpleasing, isolated, and educated to the point of no longer needing wisdom. Life could be distilled to its essence and calculated and manipulated to anyone's liking. The success of the scientific method would solve all our problems, eventually, and we would no longer have the need for the things of the past. The real problem with this mindset is that it does not (or did not) evaluate where this new definition would take us. The people in Technocracy who embrace science and progress were also some of the big believers in the older mode of thinking about humanity. Mark Twain loved industrialized progress, but wrote stories about human interaction and virtue. The old religion was not gone, but it was no longer supreme. Technology, science, and progress were proven tools that brought (at least temporary) hapiness: money, time, pleasure, and freedom from labor. People in Technocracy still clung to some of their religious beliefs, but it was not always preeminent. The conflict between technologism and religion came to a head in twentieth-century America. Henry Ford's assembly line allowed him to trounce his competition. The Scopes Monkey Trial gave public credence to the victory of science over religion. A critical assumption to that was the necessity for empirical, observable evidence. Anything that cannot be observed must not exist. This is the idea that was responsible for completely subjugating and trivializing religion. The author finds the first key event in the rise of technopoly in the publishing of a book, Principles of Scientific Management (1911). Removing the necessity for critical thinking of humans, only adherence to the machine of formulaic processes. The machinery knew better than the people did, and therefore, it was to be trusted and refined more than the human. 3. Technopoly the submission of all forms of cultural life to the sovereignty of technique and technology. Four factors that lead to to Technopoly's rise and ability to flourish in America:

ubiquitous invention in America led to the association of newness and improvement; Everything was advancing technologically and seeming to improve quality of life, standard of living, lifespan, etc. genious and ruthlessness of American capitalistsmen who exploited technology, opportunity, and humanity for wealth. These men let nothing stand in the way of technological development. (Bell, Edison, Rockefeller, Aster, Ford, Carnegie) They convinced the people of America that the future need not remember the past. Technology provided endless conveniences and comforts. Old solutions were replaced by new technologies. Medicine could cure what people formerly relied on religion to do. Families need not live close since they could drive and telephone and, theoretically, still maintain their relationships. Books were replaced by radio, which was replaced by television. Religion and faith came under open attack. Philosophers denied God. Scientists couldn't prove he existed at all or proved that he couldn't exist. Science and machinery were easier to trust than God, for they were tangible and you could observe them work successfully. Chapter 4: The Improbable World The rise of endless innovation, scientific study, and faith in their inerrancy has created a world in which people don't know what to believe. They have no absolutes to cling to, at least not any that provide limits and definitions of what reality is. They believe what science tells them is true, even if it is unbelievable, because they have no limits and no reason not to believe it. There is no assumption of order to the universe. There is no coherent, comprehensive understanding of the world. There is now too much information for any person to know and understand everything. In this excess, people, at best, only know some and certainly do not know which conflicting sources to believe. People chase after more information, thinking that having more will make things better. People want access to more or better information. The necessity of this pursuit, however, is not altogether clear. The information revolution that made information the goal of our pursuits was brought about by five inventions: The printing press made it possible for numerous copies of information to be mass-produced (faster than raising a human to relay the it) and easily transported. The telegraph made information an item to be bought and sold in quantity. It no longer mattered as much what kind of information or how good it was, but how much of it could be obtained from the most exotic or varied sources. Information became context-free, requiring that it not be of any practical value at all. Photography made it possible to sum up information previously stored in words in a visually appealing manner. Photography was the centerpiece of journalism and advertising, and it tended to replace writing in importance. Broadcasting permitted the transmission of new information every day, hour, and minute so that a person could never have all of it. Computers allowed more information to be transmitted in less time and it could be stored and analyzed and the results of that analysis became new information to be transmitted, collected, and analyzed.

Information has become a form of garbage, not only incapable of answering the most fundamental human questions, but barely useful in providing coherent direction to the solution of even mundane problems. Chapter 5: The Broken Defenses A society's defenses against information overflow are its social institutions that limit incoming information. In Technopoly, many of these defeneses are crippled or broken and provide little or no help in limiting information so that individuals can make decisions based on what is relevant and true. These are some defenses: Courts determine what evidence is admissible and what is irrelevant or heresay. They function because they greatly restrict what information is allowed entry and acceptance. Schools limit what areas of study are considered legitimate by the classes they offer and what is taught in those classes. Families are informal institutions that pass on language and belief, conserving old ideas and skeptically accepting new ones. They also determine which information is appropriate for younger family members to know and which is reserved only for adults. Political parties legitimize sources of information. Because people generally align themselves with one party, the party functions as a statement of principle for everyone else who aligns himself with it. Thus, you can know someone's intentions and the quality of their ideas based on the party with whom they align. The State or Religion is the strongest defense mechanism. Religion creates meaning for the believer, giving him a history of the world and an explanation for how it came into being, mandates from a superior moral authority, and the means to accept and reject certain information based on its (or its source's) moral quality. Religion instructs people how to behave and how not to behave, how to think and not to think, and what to believe and what not to believe. Religion serves as a means to limit and place value on certain information. The Theory of Science is a belief system that does not provide moral guidance at all. Such a belief system is another way of defining Technopoly. When religion loses much or all of its binding powerif it is reduced to mere rhetorical ashthen confusion inevitably follows about what to attend and how to assign it significance. (p. 80) Postman, while claiming that he is not a fundamentalist, says that such beliefs hold information in check and allow for coherence in the understanding of the believer. He says that like Islam, Christianity once tortured people for heresy and has the power to do so in the future (as Islam still currently does). (p. 80) The religion of the state, as was Marxism (a child of the Theory of Science), can be equally powerful as an information limiter. Marxists knew some fundamental, unprovable, truths that dictated how the world worked and how it should operate for everyone's best interest. It has, apparently, failed the test of time because Marxist nations have not been able to provide for their proletariat the kind of material wealth that "liberal democracy" has for its middle class. Things may yet change, but for now, Marxism is not as widely held as a belief system as it used to be. Liberal democracy, as seen is America, has not yet proven whether it can be an effective limiter of information, providing moral guidance to its believers. The definition of "liberal democracy" has even changed from the 18th

century, when it had its roots in Biblical morality. Today's liberal democracy does not have such strong ties to morality and might be better described as "commodity capitalism." Liberal democracy is entirely different in Technopoly than it was in Technocracy. In American Technopoly, the only means left to restrict information are technical ones, which necessarily generate more information needing to be processed, included, or excluded. Bureaucracy has as its chief aim, efficiency. Its goal is to collect meaningful information, hence its use of the standardized form. It was not originally designed for this sole purpose, but as government grew, so did its information processing needs. Now, bureaucracy creates more information than is manageable, so there are bureaucracies to manage bureaucracies. Because of their size, bureaucracies remove their workers from the responsibility of their actions. Alfred Eichmann denied responsibility for the fates of those he was in charge of transporting because his job was only concerned with moving people, not why or what happened to them after they arrived. Modern beauraucrats use the same line of reasoning: they are not responsible for the human consequences of their decisions. The true danger of bureaucracy is that they were not conceived as any sort of means of guidance, but now, in the absence of a greater authority, are used to solve moral, social, and political problems. Experts are another information-limiting source. Chapter 6: The Ideology of Machines: Medical Technology Chapter 7: The Ideology of Machines: Computer Technology Chapter 8: Invisible Technologies Chapter 9: Scientism Chapter 10: The Great Symbol Drain Chapter 11: The Loving Resistance Fighter Related Reading The Control Revolution, by James Beniger the relationship between information and culture I read this book during April 2003