Technocracy

              The chapter from Neil Postman's Technopoly, shows a display of events in the history of technology. It started with skilled workers, the steam engine, and propels into a whole new world of technology. With every new invention, idealists are becoming more frightened at the fact that we’re dehumanizing ourselves more and more. However though, it is not really doing so, it just “originated” the old ideas.

             This chapter bares similarity to Brave New World in the sense of the time the book is set in, where everyone’s objective is to keep progressing without any clear thought of what it is to progress to. In the novel, the citizens are genetically made rather than born, so you can already kind of see that humanity is stripped from them. The technology in the novel has advanced so far that the basic morals of humans has completely change, like how different John feels about Lenina than she is of him. Is technology destroying old ideas and presenting itself as the new one? Clearly, we’re still aware of this matter, so obviously, it’s not changing anything. We all know what a sin is and what its consequences are, so the old ideas still exist. It’s just standing next to a new idea, technology. The idealists have a fear of “Technocracy”, which is a supposed form of political party that will exist if we don’t realize this.

             Postman referred to United States a lot implying it being a Technopoly since it’s a free country with the acceptations of any ideas. Postman stated that technocracy “is, a society only loosely controlled by social custom and religious tradition and driven by the impulse to invent- an “unseen hand” will eliminate the incompetent and reward those who produce cheaply and well the goods that people want.” This quote has a totalitarian tone in it, by simply saying to eliminate all those who don’t follow the rules and for the ones who do follow they get whatever they want. This sounds eerily true on some levels, but I’m not convinced. This chapter is more like a warning sign for us that it’s possible if we don’t realize.