TECHNOPOLY

Ben, Shane, Ryan, Erin

Intro

• Technopoly is a totalitarian technocracy• “Average person today is comparable to

people in the middle ages ; they believed in the authority of their religion, we believe in the authority of science.”

Main Idea’s

• Neil Postman is describing how we view our modern technology today. He then differentiates it by explaining how it was first used in the past.

• His main idea is trying to show you the impact of technology throughout the dawn of invention.

Morals

• His opinion gears toward the negative side. He believes that all the advances in technology are slowly altering the human race into useless mass of life.

• As of right now, we are in the process of technology completely taking over human life.

Big ideas

• Today's society with the help of technology has led to the loss of tradition, and communication.

• Everything from thinking to what you do is based on the influence of technology.

• -religion, school, simple skills, morals etc.• There are specialists and experts for

everything, and they set standards for modern society.

continued

• This is a bureaucracy (how to manage tasks, info etc.), and we created it so in a way it is technology

• It used to be simple but we ourselves have made it more complicated.

• Bureaucracy is thought to be Tyranny.

Connection to world

• Our everyday life has many examples of bureaucracy.

• General examples are how we rate shows, grade papers, take polls, statistics etc.

• We create in a sense an invisible technology which we take advantage of now.

• We lose the sense of the initial meaning

The Author’s Opinion • Postman believes that the individuals

responsible for bureaucracy and ideas following that principle are “idiotic” - Francis Galton and his “pathological romance” with

ranking beauty with numbers.

We believe that we should re-think how we use our technology, but not bash it in the sense that Postman does.

What to take away

• In the future, who is going to be in control?