Technopoly

Postman examines the American fixation with technology and argues that the United States is in danger of becoming a  technopoly,  a system in which technology of every kind is cheerfully granted sovereignty over social institutions and national life, and becomes self-justifying, self-perpetuating, and omnipresent.  Postman traces the historical movement of technology from being a support-system for a culture’s traditions to competing with them, and, finally, to creating a totalitarian order with no use for tradition at all.  As he shows, technology comes irresistibly to redefine what we mean by religion, art, family, politics, history, truth, privacy, and intelligence, so that the new definitions fit the requirements of the technological thought-world.  As a consequence, alternative ways of living and believing become invisible and irrelevant, and the possibilities of other narratives that might serve to organize national purpose are driven out of consciousness.