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Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology


            In his book, "Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology," Neil Postman describes a society where technology is deified and, in fact, becomes a source of rationalization in which it takes the place of humans. His basis for technological theology is attributed to whom he describes as the founder of scientism, namely the belief that empiricism or positivism grounded in pure scientific discovery would tell us all we need to know about the world excluding the need for metaphysics or religion. Science, in turn, accordingly became the new god and technology, a branch and product of science, become deified as its mirror image. .
             Postman describes technopoly as a "totalitarian technocracy" - totalitarian in that it is worshipped as an authoritative, all-controlling voice that demands the "submission of all forms of cultural life to the sovereignty of technique and technology" (Postman, 52) - drawing on Ellul for credence. Ellul's ideas of technology where that technology was a category independent to human action that was autonomous, "self-determinative" and undirected in its growth and reducing human life to finding meaning in machines (Ellul,13). Thus Postman, elaborating on Ellul, saw technology (primarily, but not exclusively, in the shape of computer) striving for world domination and that technology has been for a long time the god of humans.
             Others whom Postman draws upon are Harold Innis' concept of "knowledge monopolies" that explains the ways in which technology usurps power in a technopoly: the aura of mystique and 'intelligence' of technology grant a certain allure and reverence to its practitioners secluding them from the 'ordinary folk.' Baudrillard theorizes that "technique as a medium quashes.the 'message' of the product " and Postman agrees maintaining that the glut of technical knowledge diverts us from true direction in life and from focusing on and obtaining meaningful information.


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