Technopoly: A Critique

 

Lately, I’ve been reading the book Technopoly by Neil Postman, per the recommendation of Jared Henderson, who said it was perhaps his favorite book that he read in 2025 (link here). In particular, he said that it was an interesting book to read in the context of our modern technological world and the growing push for GenAI.

I, like many of my friends and a growing number of people, hate GenAI on a deep level. I hate that it scrapes the Internet for data, training on material whether the original author/artist granted permission for it or not. I hate that it’s primarily being used by the most creatively bereft people to ever walk the earth to grift and make money off the backs of hardworking artists. I hate that a ton of water and electricity is wasted on data centers, polluting the air and water. I hate that everyday people have to suffer adverse health effects having to breathe in that air and have to pay more for the electricity because the data centers are hungrily devouring electricity. And I especially hate how the corpos are marketing it as the future. So, seeing a book about how technology has affected the past made me wonder what it could say about the future. So, to say I was drawn to Technopoly on this basis was an understatement.

Neil Postman was a cultural critic, media theorist, and educator who was known to be rather controversial, particularly in how he disapproved of personal computers and mobile devices. He has authored over 20 books, his most famous perhaps being Amusing Ourselves to Death, which discussed how people will silently give up their rights for entertainment. In Technopoly, he discusses technology’s impact on culture, particularly on social and spiritual practices. He argues that there are three different kinds of cultures: tool-using cultures, technocracies, and technopolies. Tool-using cultures have very strong spiritual and traditional practices where technology exists, but only within reverence to the culture it exists in. Technocracies are where some traditions and cultural practices exist, but technology is more prominent and dominant in cultural decision-making. Postman argues that in modern America, we live in a Technopoly, where technology has come to dominate all aspects of our lives. He expresses concern at our reliance on technical solutions to our problems, how we have become spiritually lost and gullible, and how technology has eroded cultural practices and common social behaviors.

“Technopoly eliminates alternatives to itself in precisely the way Aldous Huxley outlined in Brave New World. It does not make them illegal. It does not make them immoral. It does not even make them unpopular. It makes them invisible and therefore irrelevant. And it does so by redefining what we mean by religion, by art, by family, by politics, by history, by trust, by privacy, by intelligence, so that our definitions fit its new requirements. Technopoly, in other words, is a totalitarian technocracy.” (Postman, 146 – 147)

Now, having read Technopoly, I have to say that I have many points of disagreement with Postman’s point of view. For one, he seems to glaze old world, pre-Enlightenment era Europe, claiming it was a place of spiritual and social order.

“Ordinary men and women might not clearly grasp how the harsh realities of their lives fit into the grand and benevolent design of the universe, but they have no doubt that there is such a design, and their priests and shamans are well able, by deduction from a handful of principles, to make it, if not wholly rational, at least coherent. The medieval period was a particularly clear example of this point. How comforting it must have been to have a priest explain the meaning of the death of a loved one, of an accident, or of a piece of good fortune. To live in a world in which there were no random events – in which everything was, in theory, comprehensible; in which every act of nature was infused with meaning – is an irreplaceable gift of theology.” (Postman, 177 – 178)

He goes on to argue that the advancement of technology has disrupted, if not entirely eliminated, this view of the world, and that we are all putting our faith in technology over theocracy. However, any cursory student of history will tell you that this was not a time of spiritual rest. Well, it might have been for Christians. Because for many Jews, Muslims, Pagans (Norse, Celtic, or otherwise), and the religious and spiritual practitioners of the various indigenous cultures of the Americas, before, after, and during the Medieval period really sucked.

How can we forget the Crusades? A conflict which claimed the lives of many Muslims and Jews, putting blood on the hands of the Roman Catholic Church, wanting the Holy Land to belong to Christians. What of the Saxons? A group of people were viewed as heathens (a word that technically means “people that live in the countryside”), and 4,500 of which were killed and their sacred pillar destroyed by the order of Charlemagne. What of the Aztecs and Maya? Whose entire way of cultural and spiritual life and understanding of the world had been destroyed by Spanish conquerors.

Yet, Postman argues that the greatest spiritual and cultural disruption was the invention of the printing press? Granted, Martin Luther wrote his 95 Theses, translated the Bible and printed it so the need of a priest to interpret it for common people was not wholly necessary and led to war, but Christianity still exists as a dominant religious doctrine, now just in different flavors. To treat all these other events as somehow not as impactful on human spiritual life as the re-purposing of a wine press seems rather shortsighted.

Moreover, Postman gives an example that the invention of the stirrup brought about the re-enforcement of feudal society in Europe.

“The stirrup made it possible to fight on horseback, and this created an awesome new military technology: mounted shock combat. The new form of combat, as Lynn White Jr. has meticulously detailed, enlarged the importance of the knightly class and changed the nature of feudal society. Landholders found it necessary to secure the services of cavalry for protection. Eventually, the knights seized control of church lands and distributed them to vassals on the condition that they stay in the service of knights. If a pun will be allowed here, the stirrup was in the saddle, and took feudal society where it would not otherwise have gone.” (Postman, 83)

Yet, what is the purpose of a stirrup? Well, if you asked me, it would be to stabilize a person who's riding on a horse. But to Postman, it seems the device’s natural inclination was toward violent usurping. Did the inventor of the stirrup have notions of knights ruling over lands and peasants tending to them? Did feudalism not develop in other areas to the degree it did in Europe because of the absence of stirrups? Is it the secret dream of every horse-girl who slides her boots into stirrups while mounting an appaloosa to “do a feudalism?”

Another issue I have is that Postman seems to think that a lot of people are babes in the woods when it comes to technology. That we are incapable of learning or better understanding these things that just happen to come into existence. He claims that people are too quick to believe what is told to them and that this is a fault of informational glut. That we are too inundated with information that we cannot parse what is true or false. He claimed that if he told the reader that the paper the book was printed on was made out of pickled herring, a lot of people would take that claim on face value. That isn’t a fault of the technology, but the reader’s gullibility or intellectual laziness. 

Most folks (at least I’d hope) are wise enough to not believe him. To paraphrase a quote from Carl Sagan, you should investigate every claim made the same way you would buy a used car. People have the ability to sift through information and test it. It’s not like I open a Wikipedia page and start crying because it’s so full of information. I have the ability to just seek out the information I want to look at, check the sources, and make an informed decision on it. I, for one, know that the book wasn't printed on pickled herring paper because I read it on a E-Reader (a device I'm sure Postman would have hated.) 

I feel one of the critical things that Postman is missing in this book is the presence of human agency. In a way, he infantilizes all of humanity as slaves to our machines, where, in my view, it has always been the opposite. As Thulsa Doom observes in Conan the Barbarian, “What is steel compared to the hand that wields it? Look at the strength in your body, the desire in your heart.” In human minds, these technologies have been shaped and by human hands they have been formed and wielded. And the thing about human behavior, as anyone who has played a video game online knows, is that it’s unpredictable.

The inventor of the stirrup probably was tired of falling off his horse. Did he think that it would be used to reinforce feudalism? Probably not, but feudal lords did. Gutenberg was probably tired of having to write everything down by hand. Did he think it would be used to print copies of the Bible and upend the authority of the Holy Catholic Church? Probably not, but Martin Luther did. Alan Turing, the father of computer sciences, made his inventions based on the need to decode encoded German messages quickly, saving British lives. Was it his intention for his machines to eventually be developed into things that can generate deepfakes of celebrities? I don’t really think so, but Elon Musk certainly did.

As I said at the beginning of this post, I’m not 100% pro-tech. I still hate AI and don’t think it should exist in the capacity it does. But, I do think Postman is pointing the finger in the wrong direction. Rather than damning the technology, he should look at the forces pushing technology in the negative ways it has been used. Does AI insist that it should be used, or is the insistence of the many tech companies that want to make a profit off of it? Is it the natural evolution of a micro-blogging website to become a cesspool of hate and pornography, or is that the will of the millionaire that bought the site because it’s lucrative that way? Are computers meant to do illicit activities and spread false information, or is that the will of the sickos that use them to that end? I don’t see technology as the shaper of culture, but as something the dominant culture creates to suit its purposes, whether it be positive or negative.

I agree with Postman that human connection is eroding, and that human interaction and human work is being devalued, but I don’t think it’s because of the existence of computers. Rather, I think it’s because of the structures in place that stand to benefit from our isolation and atomization, and offer computer services and programs as the solution to our depressed, over-worked, and lonely psyches. I don’t think people are overwhelmed by the mass of information, but by the bureaucratic and corporate bullshit that they have to deal with when they know better alternatives exist. Our culture has gotten more focused on quick solutions and impersonal interactions, and our technology has evolved to reflect this. But, we have to reject the idea that our work is not valuable, that our connections are unimportant, that any engagement is good engagement, and that seeking the truth and proper information are not worthwhile. Along with being reflective and cautious, we need to use the tech that reflects our beliefs and abandon the ones that don’t. We are not our machines and our machines are not people. I’m tired of the misanthropic drive behind modern tech. I think it’s high time that we put the “personal” back in “personal computer.”