America has made some of the greatest advancements in terms of technology; Neil Postman’s term technopoly describes what Postman feels America has become. However, Postman’s view of this technopoly – differing from Kurzweil’s view on technological advancement – is one of low appreciation. Postman’s description of America’s technopoly is defined as a place where all decisions are based on greater advancements and efficiency.
A technopoly abandons all values and morals of the ‘Old World’, according to Postman. Before America evolved into a technopoly Postman describes how America was a technocracy first. “Technocracies are concerned to invent machinery” and that people should be treated “as if they were machinery”; whereas in a technopoly, people are rather replaced by machinery. However, even before technocracy was the ‘Old World’ or the time that people used tools. Postman’s article describes and condemns the transitions of the techniques used by our forefathers to a technocracy and then to a technopoly. With that said Postman in Technopoly is attacking the characteristics of America to solve human problems through technology and argues that a country ruled so greatly by technology is only becoming a totalitarian society through technology.
Postman discusses the theology of Frederick Winslow Taylor in correlation the development of a technopoly. Taylor’s view on the world holds much scientific value, as discussed in his book The Principles of Scientific Management. Taylor argues that science is more fundamental to society than faith, such as religion because he believes that “human judgment cannot be trusted, because it is plagued by laxity, ambiguity, and unnecessary complexity. Taylor’s theology represents how the values of a technopoly shift from spiritual religion to technological religion, in other words technology, science, and faith are becoming the values of society and that ‘faith’ is in technology.
Postman’s article represents a lot of the main satirical points of Brave New World. The setting of Brave New World is in fact the description of Postman’s Technopoly; the New World in the novel holds much scientific values, for example the fact that humans are no longer born but created because science can produce a much more ‘adequate’ and ‘efficient’ human. In describing how people are created in the novel a scientist in the book exclaims, “Ninety-six identical twins working ninety-six identical machines!”. The efficiency of this fact is not only exciting but viewed as largely progressive. Brave New World also reveals Postman’s descriptions of the ‘Old World’ in comparison to the ‘New World’ – the society in Brave New World. The Old World in the novel is similar to the reservation of the ‘savages’. In the Old World people not only functioned without technology and used tools, like shovels, hammers, and etc., but they had faith in a god and spiritual aspects such as the soul. In the New world – the technopoly – that is considered nonsense; Science and technology are the key to production, progress, and sensibility.
