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Musings on Technopoly

I am constantly amazed at how obediently people accept explanations that begin with the words “The computer shows…” or “The computer has determined…” It is Technopoly’s equivalent of the sentence “It is God’s will,” and the effect is roughly the same. (Neil Postman, Technopoly)

Postman wrote these words in 1993. Five years later, I was given this book, as were all the faculty at the Christian liberal arts university where I taught. At that time, we still had at least a little critical distance on the subject of what Postman calls “Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology.” But now, the surrender seems almost complete.

I’ve been spot reading in this book, mainly by reviewing everything I underlined or dog-eared before, because in thinking about worldview it’s impossible not to have to think about technology. Postman organized the role of technology in a culture in three levels: Tool-using, in which people use tools to accomplish specific purposes, but their basic assumptions and worldview are unaffected; Technocracy, in which the tools a society implements begin to challenge and warp worldview; and Technopoly, in which a Technocracy becomes totalitarian by “redefining what what we mean by religion, by art, by family, by politics, by history, by truth, by privacy, by intelligence, so that our definitions fit its new requirements.”

In other words, technology remakes us in its own image.

I find it fascinating — not necessarily in a good way, but more in the way of a mouse staring into the eyes of an approaching snake — to look back at earlier critiques and predictions about the direction American culture is going. The failure to hear them or build appropriate boundaries is the weirdest phenomenon. Technopoly is not a sudden occurrence, after all, and if humans have any real freedom and intelligence we could have employed healthy skepticism at many points along the way. When I was growing up, my father, a biology teacher, would often invoke the example of the frog boiled alive in an experiment in which the heat was turned up in tiny increments. This was used as an analogy for succumbing to social or spiritual pressures if we don’t have clear boundaries. It comes to mind now as I see where we’ve come as a culture.

It’s interesting to see Postman’s hypothesis that a crucial starting point was in a dispute between the Interstate Commerce Commission in 1910 and some Northeastern railroads seeking permission to increase weight limits for their cargo. They wanted to regain money lost to wage increases, but their application was denied because, the opposing lawyer argued, they could regain their funds through “scientific management.” The originator of this idea was Frederick W. Taylor, whose Principles of Scientific Management was published in 1911 and, in the words of Postman,

contains the first explicit and formal outline of the assumptions of the thought-world of Technopoly. These include the beliefs that 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; that in fact human judgment cannot be trusted, because it is plagued by laxity, ambiguity, and unnecessary complexity; that subjectivity is an obstacle to clear thinking; that what cannot be measured either does not exist or is of no value; and that the affairs of citizens are best guided and conducted by experts.

We see the symptoms everywhere, from the long wait times at doctor’s offices when “the computer is slow today,” to the apps increasingly required by groups we are a part of to “manage” things already easily managed through human contact, to the subordination of the humanities to STEM, to the hollowing out of human relations through social media, to the increasing ramp-up of AI.

What worries me is that ultimately Technopoly regards not humans, but humanly made machines, as the increasingly unchallenged authority. At what point will I reach the line Daniel and his friends reached with Neduchadnezzar? At what point will I reach the “this far, but no farther” boundary between my beliefs, and those of the modern world? More importantly, as the heat keeps notching up degree by degree, I wonder: will I recognize the line when it comes?

 

2 Comments

  • Jeane

    I find this trend disturbing too, how many apps my kids are asked to use for classes, or that other parents want me to joi. I am stubborn and reluctant to learn new platforms of social media just because that is where everyone else has shifted to recently… and when friends told me the other day how ai ‘alexa’ appears to be learning the habits of people and acting on its own, I was a bit horrified.

    I have not read the book….

  • Janet

    I agree. This article touches on that — how “personal assistants” like Alexa and Echo are always collecting data about people: https://www.npr.org/2018/01/14/577969778/what-your-smart-devices-know-about-you

    Awhile back, I heard another news story about these devices being tweaked to “improve parenting.” They would make suggestions, or tattle on kids if they were in a room they weren’t supposed to be in, etc. I can’t find the article, but if I do I may post it here. . .