Good evening dear followers. In my Technology & Culture In America class this week we were asked to read the following book: "Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology" by Neil Postman. After reading the first half of this book I began to realize that even though I love technology I am not blind to its problems. To those who say technology has no faults, I ask you when was the last time your computer crashed or whatever happened to that grand notion of a "paperless office"?
First, the argument. Postman describes what he calls the three stages of how a culture deals with technology: 1) tool-using, 2) technocracy, 3) technopoly. In a tool-using culture, technical improvements are limited to the uses at hand. This differs from the technocracy, where the tools "play a central role in the thought world of the culture." In the technopoly, tools become the culture. Postman's argument is along similar lines as suggested in the subtitle of this book, "the surrender of culture to technology." Postman's main thesis is that America has become a technopoly, which means that culture has lost its moral authority to technology. Technology has become the solution to whatever questions are asked, ushering in the reign of experts. Whatever else, there's a lot to agree with here.
As I finished with Chapter 5 for the time being, I have come away with this; Postman argues that as the development of technology has progressed, our society has lost the ambiguities and subtleties; the so-called "shades of gray" that make us human. Although Postman doesn't advocate the abandonment of technology, he does encourage us to be aware that technology is indeed running our lives. The trouble is, most of us are not even aware of the extent that it is, and we need to use technology responsibly. I can't wait to explore the second half of Postman's book to see what he describes next to us.
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