Features
- Cover Type: Paperback with 240 pages
- Published by: Vintage March 31, 1993
- Written in: English
- ISBN 10 Number: 0679745408
- ISBN 13 Number: 978-0679745402
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Book Dimensions:
8 x 5.2 x 0.7 inches
- Weighs: 9.4 ounces
Product Review
Neil Postman is one of the most level-headed analysts of education, media, and technology, and in this book he spells out the increasing dependence upon technology, numerical quantification, and misappropriation of "Scientism" to all human affairs. No simple technophobe, Postman argues insightfully and writes with a stylistic flair, profound sense of humor, and love of language increasingly rare in our hastily scribbled e-mail-saturated world.
From Publishers Weekly
Mixing provocative insights and cliched criticisms, Postman defines the U.S. as a society in which technology is deified to a near-totalitarian degree.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Reader ReviewsThis is one of those books that make you think the only reason it isn't permanently on the New York Times Bestseller List (or the top 100 of the Amazon.com list) is because the general public is either too afraid to read it after seeing the subtitle, or people in power have been doing everything they can to render it unattractive. With every new innovation and social argument today, from birth control and feminism to the media and privacy, we all find ourselves suspiciously willing to turn over every intellectual rock and make hamburger out of every sacred cow in the search for enemies, heroes, reasons and justifications for our beliefs and actions. Yet with fear and trembling we all ignore this one- which Neil Postman makes all too clear may be the only one we should be discussing: the surrendering of all of our true sense of freedom, independence, responsibility and community to the wrathful, jealous god of Technology. In the opening to the book he quotes a philosopher who sums up his entire point with an idea that puts our entire cultural period into a disturbing perspective: regardless of its basis in scientific innovation and theory, technology "is a branch of moral philosophy, not science." The mere thought that our entire world and the daily transformations taking place in it may be in the wrong hands- at our request- and that THAT is the explanation for the incredible degree of unquestioned, unexamined change, is enough to make you afraid of your computer. And remember, this book was published years before Dolly the cloned sheep came to town, or we were anywhere near as close to charting the entire human genome. (Like the relationship of Einstein's theories to the Manhattan Project, with that alone we have no idea what world we are in store for or what war in the twenty-first century will be like; yet we go blindly onward, giving our scientific leaders and CEOs of industry carte blanche, without questioning if we have a choice.) Postman simply makes it clear that the people who are taking us where we are headed don't really know what they're doing anymore than we do in terms of the implications for our culture- or any culture's- future, and really don't care. Because they have sold their souls to the idea of progress and markets- falling in line with the dictates of the cult of technology. Many countries around the world see Globalization as little more than the Americanization of the world, like Rome around the time of Christ. Postman's TECHNOPOLY makes it clear that that force may have malevolent implications because it could actually be built upon the transformation of American democracy and culture into that of technological fascism. With every chapter, some almost hilarious in the little absudities we live by made clear, some scary in their implications and explanations of the seemingly unrelated ills of our world, Neil Postman creates one of the greatest and most important diagnoses of the Achilles heel of modern Western Society ever written. TECHNOPOLY is prophetic, and like every prophet, what he has to say will only be apocalyptic to our world if we choose to ignore it.
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