It seems as if the authors of both "Computers" (Eric G. Swedin and David L. Ferro), and "Technopoly" (Neil Postman) have this deep skeptical, negative feeling of technology in the near future. As Swedin and Ferro conclude "Computers," by predicting that in the near future, computers will "completely transform humanity's ability to manipulate reality" (p. 149), much of the beginning of Neil Postman's "Technopoly" explains how technology has transformed the American Culture for both the good and bad.
Postman commences his book by disagreeing King Thamus' claim that "writing will be a burden to society and nothing but a burden" (p. 4) by stating that "every technology is both a burden and a blessing..." (p.5). Postman uses King Thamus' story as a platform to question how the advancements of technology are benefiting us, using the example of "winners and losers" (p. 11). Further, he takes his questions to witness how America has gone under "collisions everywhere..." (p. 16), forming a new American culture that is making the old fashioned/traditional life obsolete by explaining how schools have taught our children to "operate computerized systems instead of teaching things that are more valuable to children" (p. 11). The rest of the first chapter merely sets the tone for the rest of the first half of the book as it mainly criticizes the effective, dangerous movement of technology, which Postman calls it, the Technopoly.
Further in the reading, Postman deeply goes into a transition movement describing Tools to Technocracy. I never thought of this whole movement in depth, but as soon as Postman compared tools to technology by stating "tools did not attack the dignity and integrity of the culture..." (p. 23), it became real to me that technology can really be a threat to the American culture because we are all beginning to depend on it. Technology is in fact attacking our culture as it is seen in "Computers" that "the computer has opened up global communications to multitudes. By improving the means by which we communicate, entertain ourselves, travel, calculate, and do a thousand other things, the computer will be an essential tool in reaching for the stars..." (148-149).
It then comes to my interest and questioning of Postman's conclusion of how America is "the only culture to have become a Technopoly" (p. 48). Postman includes four reasons why a Technopoly has developed in America, one of them being because of the "men who were quicker and more focused than those of other nations in exploiting the economic possibilities of new technologies...Samuel Morse, Alexander Graham Bell, Thomas Edison..." (p. 53), all also stated in "Computers" because of their major inventions that drastically changed technology. Though it comes to my mind to argue that America is not the only Technopoly. In "Computers" we saw that European nations like England, Germany and Russia were developing technologies such as the inventions developed at Bletchley Park in London, and the release of Sputnik in Russia. Why doesn't Postman consider Asia, primarily Japan and China to be in a technopoly?
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