Technopoly ( First Blog )

     Many people in today's society think along the same lines as Thamus, the king of a great of Upper Egypt that "technological innovation has a one sided effect." ( Postman pg 4 ) The truth is that technology is good and bad, always both, however it just depends on how humans decide to use it. The problem with technology is that society is surrendering everything to it. It is becoming a religion for many people, in which the only way to move forward into the future is to accept technology or get left behind. For example if we look at the invention of the mechanical clock, it was created for monasteries. At first it served as "the technology that could provide precision to these rituals of devotion." ( pg 14 ) Soon this clock turned devotion from God, to the devotion for money. The clock became used for working hours and capitalism. 

     According to Postman their are three types of cultures, tool using culture, technocracies, and technopolies. Basically in tool using cultures tools were integrated into their society, at times some tools were not introduced such as the submarine because of the fear that it would not be accepted in God's eyes. In technocracies, tools attacked the culture, such as Galileo's idea that the sun did not move around earth but the earth moved around the sun. In scriptures it was said that the earth was in the center of the universe and everything revolved around it. But once inventions as the telescope came to existence, it brought along new ideas, many which went against Gods word. Finally a Technopoly is "totalitarian technocracy." ( pg 48 ) 

     The technocracy culture was a very important step because it was the start to the separation between moral and intellectual values. Science can explain many questions humans have, but not all of them such as why are we here ,so religion still sticks around. However, technopolies are rushing massive amounts of information that is not being controlled by anyone. It is true that cultures suffer from a lack of information, but too much information "information without meaning, information without control mechanisms," only makes the information we have useless!