Reading Assignment #4--Postman's Technopoly pgs. 92-199

Good evening dear followers. Now that I have finished reading this book, "Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology", I feel as though Postman made some very good points. Unfortunately getting to those points seemed a bit of a chore; it was sometimes so much information to read that it would take every bit of motivation I had to just finish a page. In Chapter 6, he roasts the medical industry's infatuation with new technology while the doctors neglect their patients. Patients invariably are reduced to slabs of meat on a assembly line. He makes the salient point that information is not understanding, which is usually ignored by most promoters of technopoly. I especially found this quote surprising, "Although the U.S. and England have equivalent life-expectancy rates, American doctors perform six times as many cardiac bypass operations per capita as English doctors do".

In Chapter 9, he discusses "scientism". Scientism claims that science alone can render truth about the world and reality. To me this chapter is the most humorous as he disects scientists, or in his meaning the "masters of the obvious". These scientists think they have discovered something new and unique meanwhile it is what most people on the street already know. He basically asks the question as to whether or not social science is really a science.

In Chapter 11, the last chapter, Postman talks about the "resistance fighter". Resistance fighters are those that "understand technology must never be accepted as part of the natural order of things" (p.184). Resistance fighters believe that every piece of technology carries with it some sort of plot or agenda which may ultimately end up being life-enhancing or life-threatening.

In the end, Neil Postman leaves no stone unturned in his attack on how technology's ideology is undermining our own values and our very way of life. This is not an inspirational book but rather a book filled with the knowledge as to how technology manipulates us and uses us. So in conclusion this book doesn't ask us if technology is good or bad but rather what role technology should be confined to.