Technopoly Neil Postman Summary

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

Neil Postman; cultural critic, author, and teacher extraordinaire, spent his career warning and educating about the role technology was beginning to play in society. He wrote all of his books, articles, and speeches by hand and reportedly never met a computer or typewriter that he liked. He also never published an academic journal article due to his belief that his ideas were meant to be read by all, not exclusively a handful of scholars. In today's age of technological overload, just thirty years after his most well-known book "Amusing Ourselves to Death," Neil Postman is revered as a prophet as more and more of our media consumption becomes purely for entertainment purposes.

In chapter 11 (The Loving Resistance Fighter) of the book Technopoly, published in 1992, Neil Postman focuses on a solution to the problems created by Technopoly. A "Technopoly" (a word postman capitalizes throughout the book) is a society that no longer merely uses technology as a support system but instead is shaped by it. Postman proposes that we become "loving resistance fighter(s)" who retain "the narratives and symbols that once made the United States the hope of the world"(p.182). He believes education is to lead the resistance against technology by changing the curriculum to help restore a sense of meaning and purpose lost to the Technopoly.

Today, when almost everyone carries a smartphone, information about everything is instantly right at our fingertips. In today’s society that may seem like a significant advantage over the past, however, in Neil Postman’s book, Amusing Ourselves to Death, he presents a different view. Written some twenty years before widespread use of the internet, Postman builds a case for the liabilities of the endless amounts of information. In the fifth chapter, “The Peek-A-Boo World.” He explores the impact on the public discourse of two mid-nineteenth century inventions, the telegraph, and the photograph. The author views the telegraph changed the public discourse by making information and news irrelevant, impotent and incoherent.

In Neil Postman’s 1992 book, Technopoly: the Surrender of Culture to Technology, the term "Technopoly" is defined as a society which believes "the primary, if not the only, goal of human labor and thought is efficiency, that technical calculation is in all respects superior to human judgment ... and that the affairs of citizens are best guided and conducted by experts." In his book, Postman argues that the United States is the only country to have established into a technopoly country. He said that the United States has been swamped with people who do not see the downside of advances in technology. This seemed dangerous to Postman because technophiles want more technology but that would not always have a positive effect. Postman also said,

Postman expresses in his assertion that to many, it may appear that Orwell and Huxley foresaw the same future of the relationship between technology and humanity, but that is not the case. In George Orwell’s novel 1984, Orwell expressed the fear that we, as a society, would become captive to the oppression that technology causes. To simplify, Orwell feared the censorship this oppression would cause. Conversely, Huxley stressed that we would not object to the oppression, and even show love and adoration to it. Postman’s analysis of Orwell and Huxley’s visions for the future is accurate due to the willing submission society has to technology.

Neil Postman deeply believed that the medium inevitably gives off a strong hold on the messages that it communicates. A medium as Postman explains to the reader, is to technology as the mind is to the brain. In this sense technology is viewed as a mechanism. The medium is viewed as the social and intelligent world made by the mechanism. Postman argues that the formation of public discourse even if that form is mainly obtained through the technology of newspapers, books, etc. or electronically through television or the radio, will impact the ideas that we perceive and formulate daily.

Postman’s argument that through technology we are “amusing ourselves to death” is also relevant to the age of Internet. With the Internet we have many different sources available to get a lot of information quickly. But, do we truly understand all the information? Postman thinks we take things out of context and do not reason anymore. Also, look how entertaining the Internet can be. YouTube has videos and other media. You can download music and movies. Social media is entertainment as well.

In the passage, Neil Postman argues that Huxley’s vision of contemporary society is more relevant to current events in society than Orwell’s is. Huxley believes, that as a society, humans choose to utilize technology to the maximum in place of their extraordinary human capabilities such as free-thinking and critical thinking. One could relate Huxley’s ideas to current events in history, such as how excessive internet usage affects learning, what today’s youth focuses on in technology, and how the creation of television and social media have influenced the world in a major way, to demonstrate the accuracy of Huxley’s vision.

Technology has always been a controversial subject between conservative people and innovators. Some people believe that it is a great tool to connect cultures and improve education and innovation in our society today, but others view it as a menace in our lives. “Growing Up Tethered” by Sherry Turkle and “George Orwell...Meet Mark Zuckerberg” by Lori Andrews both view technology as a dangerous tool. They believe in the many drawbacks of technology and the harm it can do to our lives with no explanation of the positive effects it has had on our society. “Our Future Selves” by Eric Schmidt and Jared Cohen plays the role of a positive look at technology and its role in our lives today. It gives examples of how advancing technology helps us and improves so many peoples’s lives. We can use Schmidt and Cohen’s essay as a lens to view the other two texts and gain a different understanding of what they are writing about.

One of the side effects of technology is how all information is eventually scrambled and means something incredibly different than the original idea. Comparatively, ‘Telephone’, a popular children’s game, is where a child makes up a sentence and the sentence is passed by word of mouth in a circle. Once the sentence is back to the beginning, the children often laugh at how different the sentence is from the original. This is exactly what the advanced technology does. In the process of trying to understand the original message, advanced technology can make everything out to be a lot worse than it actually is. What once was an inspiring story about how to grow a vegetable can turn into a story about animal rights. With technology, information is moved around a lot faster, meaning there is a higher chance that something will be misunderstood in the middle. Everything that is put through technology is changed and altered. Correspondingly, a techno-pessimist believes that people should solve problems, “They do not have faith in ‘technological fixes’ to solve social problems, instead emphasizing moral or political solutions” (Techno-optimism versus Techno-pessimism). A techno-pessimist believes that problems should not be solved by technology. Technology will always use logical problem solving techniques. Humans will always include emotional connection to create solutions. Technology may miss vital information that only the human heart can process and find

This essay will describe how nature and technology are sometimes uncritically compared as opposites or binaries. It will also debate these two thinking’s and whether technology operates as an extension to the human body and if humans are classified as natural or technological beings or both. By looking at a design which as interactive technology, with reference to Arthur. W. B. The Nature of Technology, 2009 , Cox. D. J. The Tao of Postmodernism, 1989 and Dusek. V. Philosophy of Technology, 1941

Technology often elicits imagery of lifeless, emotionless, and automated machinery. It is frequently viewed as a vehicle or weapon to oppress individuals and maintain conformity. Classic dystopian novels such as Brave New World depict the depraved and immoral uses of technology at the hands of the ruthless government. Despite this daunting view of technology that numerous individuals hold, I personally viewed technology as a catalyst for beneficial change and progress.

The evolution of technology has become indescribable. Technology is prevalent in our society, as well as its portrayal in the media, a seemingly essential aspect of our everyday lives. Although many idolize how technology has improved our lives, many fail to recognize technology's faults. By using three persuasive literary devices (pathos, logos, and ethos), Neil Postman expresses his concern for technological advancement and possible failure in the book Amusing Ourselves to Death. Logos appeals to logic; when using a persuasive device such as logos, you are using logical reasoning to appeal to the reader. When using logos, you must include facts, statistics, and citing credible sources. By using ethos, the author conveys his ideas while being well aware of what he is talking about by utilizing credible sources. Pathos, however, conveys the author’s ideas by appealing to the reader’s emotions. Postman does an outstanding job of orchestrating a piece using the most popular persuasive elements.

The present society of our world now thrives on mankind’s advancement in technology. According to Munkittrick (2011) People still believe mankind to be experiencing the information age. While in fact mankind is now starting to experience it’s fifth and arguably most intense revolution in technology. Which brings us into the Hybrid age in which technology may no longer be viewed as what will be the next great invention. But instead as a rare technological view that will further be a part of mankind’s lives in culture, communication, art and most importantly our society. Computers rule over our present society and redefines the many ways in which people function in their everyday lives. Communication, information and even religious beliefs