Neil Postman, Technopoly

Copyright 1999 by Tad Beckman, Harvey Mudd College

The word 'technology' comes from the Greek word 'techne.' The Greeks had two words meaning something like "bringing forth" and these were 'techne' and 'episteme.' 'Episteme' is what we get our word 'epistemology' (knowledge) from. So, in other words, the Greeks distinguished between things that come forth on their own (episteme) and things that come forth by acts of humans (techne). Both are modes of what the Greeks called aletheia and we translate this with the word 'truth.' This introduces a very important distinction between the ways we think about truth (hence knowledge) and the way the Greeks thought about it. As Heidegger has pointed out, the Greeks thought aletheia literally as "unconcealment;" we think truth literally as "correctness." The opposite of correctness is incorrectness or falsehood; but falsehood seems different from concealment. Playing around a little with these ideas makes us realize that there is no obvious translation from the Greek's concept to ours. The contrast centers in a very different way of looking at the world, and many older cultures are similar to the Greeks in this regard. The Greek tends to think of being (or reality) as largely hidden and only revealed (or unconcealed) in "moments of truth." Consider our concept of the "true friend" ["He was a dear friend, and true"]. It is nothing we can test for correctness; if it means anything, it is something that comes to be revealed. What this discussion means for the word 'technology' is that its ancient root in 'techne' implies humans bringing something forth to alter their world (environment) as a revelation our of a deeper complex of planning, much of which remains behind in concealment. Hence, technology is never just a tool; it is, rather, a whole human complex of which the manufactured tool is merely a small manifestation.

Postman begins with technology in the simple tool-using epoch. A tool is something that we make and then use to achieve some aim. Most indigenous people of North America fractured, chipped, and sharpened various hard stone materials to make projectile points that were capable of piercing the skin of animals. The end was nourishment in food, and the means was hunting. The projectile point and its specific means of deliver (whether atlatl or, later, bow and arrow) was a specific development of means-as-hunting to the end-of-food. The overarching concept of means-ends remains in the human being, and the tool is merely brought in as a partial fulfillment of means. In this "primitive" form of technology, tool-making has not been alienated from its overarching human foundation within human culture and the human's intellectual and moral life. Tool-using technology is obviously run by the creation and execution of "vital interests," as the philosopher Jose Ortega y Gassett ("Man the Technician") called them. Tools are helpmates in the cultural process of humans inventing modes of human dwelling.

There came a time in the development of Western society, Postman claims, when tool-making and tool-using moved into a position of such domination that technology began to attack culture itself. We could say, in fact, that we moved into "the cult of the tool." Just as "aristocracy" means that the privileged class has the power of rule, "technocracy" means that the cult of tools has the power of rule and has replaced the cult of aristocrats. Postman, appropriately, sees the era of Francis Bacon (only about 400 years ago) as the key period in this transition. To Bacon we owe the reflection that "knowledge is power;" but Bacon's interest in knowledge was clearly in technology, not in so-called disinterested knowledge by reflection. (We can see this clearly through his book The New Atlantis.) Bacon is talking about the correctness of our methods and machines in giving us powers to do things; that is, he is using the word 'knowledge' in a very new way. Evolution of the Western world since the 17^th Century has elaborated on this thought in that sense that we believe in the intimate relationship between the exercise of power and the creation of new technologies for exploitation of the physical world. In the age of technocracy, the cult of technology has become the dominating force in our culture.

I think that Postman is right in taking Bacon as a key figure, symbolically, but we should realize that Bacon simply represents an ongoing process of development. As mentioned above, more ancient concepts of knowledge, truth, and power relate to concepts of being or of right-ways that are largely hidden from us and whose revelation (or disclosure) to us are viewed as powerful guides. It is this concept (the gradual emergence of being) that more ancient cultures are founded upon. At Bacon's time, this was rapidly being replaced by a pragmatic formula in which power is realized in local and immediate achievement of useful ends. The revelation of deeply hidden realities was being put aside as irrelevant to practical life. The 17^th and 18^th Centuries demonstrated a continuous rise in the power and prestige of science and technical invention. In turn, the power of religious institutions and traditional aristocracies was declining. By the end of the 18^th Century (which is the beginning of the Industrial Revolution in England and Europe) technology was having a tremendous impact on society, leading to creation throughout the 19^th Century of so-called "modern industrial states."

It is not claimed, here, that the actual physical processes of technology had changed. What had changed was "design" -- that is, the overarching ways in which technology is executed as a cultural possession. Importantly, we had moved from merely making tools that helped us do things to a dramatically new era of design in which we were making tools (machines) that replaced the human in the process of doing. Equally important, we were making tools that made other tools. At the same time, scientific knowledge had helped to design dramatically new sources of power so that manufacturing could be released from river fronts and placed in any locale. Urban industrial society was being created and with it all of the social problems of massive numbers of people coping with living situations that had no past and, consequently, no norms. We should call this era technocracy, Postman claims, because technology has stepped to the forefront in determining cultural life. The existence of machines, for instance, defines a entirely different way in which people work.

Technocracy is not at all where things come to an end, according to Postman. Technocracy has steadily given way to what he calls technopoly. In the age of technopoly, technology is not merely the dominant factor within culture; rather technology seeks to redefine culture itself. This represents the ultimate alienation of technology from its human basis. That is, so long as humans create culture and therein formulate and modify and seek various ends, technology functions as a means to those ends, hence, a factor of culture subordinate to human design. If technology itself succeeds in redefining culture, human life and human design come to be driven by technology. Technology becomes the "author" of ends, and humans become means to those ends. This, clearly, is the same point that Heidegger's philosophy carries us toward. It is also the product of the dangerous situation that Ortega described. Where technology assumes the powerful position of omnipotence, humans lose access to any clear conception of their own vital interests. The whole process comes to be driven by technology itself and humans are alienated to a subordinate role where they no longer shape their own lives. Technopoly is what Postman calls "totalitarian technology." Technopoly proceeds to redefine what all the other features of culture can mean to us.

In his chapter "The Improbable World," Postman suggests that the principal key to technopoly's successful assault against traditional culture has been its control over and elevation of information. Beginning with the printing press and then the telegraph and the telephone and "ending" with the Internet and ultrahigh-speed satellite communication, technology has constructed a pervasive framework for the passage of information. Hidden within this mundane statement, however, is the fact that technopoly has thereby made information as such important -- no, in fact, essential. That is, technopoly has elevated the concept of information as preeminent and, as the sole dispenser of information, acquired the power to control the destiny of an information-dependent culture as a whole. As Postman observes, technopoly has succeeded in redefining "knowledge" and "reason" into something more like "information" and "familiarity." It is only when we reflect on this (something that technopoly never wants us to do!) that we realize the extent to which knowledge and information are different. (We can have all kinds of information about someone or something, for instance, and still know very little.) Postman highlights the differences by asking us to consider how many of the conflicts, problems, or issues that we know about in the world could actually be solved by simply having more information.

In his next chapter, "The Broken Defenses," Postman tries to explain how this invasion of information has happened. Traditional culture, Postman claims, has been based on the management and, in particular, the limitation of information. Academic institutions and their programs, for instance, represented established authorities for classification, criticism, and limitation of fruitful information (knowledge). He also notes that child rearing requires a family to limit the information to which a child is exposed and that this is essential to the child's productive development. That expression, "productive development," in fact, assumes that growth has to occur within a limited realm of ends and means that we create and that the child comes to understand and accept. In the realm of technopoly, in contrast, children are showered with information coming at them from all sides; it is a truly staggering world in which the humane realm of ends and means (what Ortega called "vital interests") is diluted beyond recognition. In conclusion, Postman suggests that technopoly has succeeded in this campaign of redefining culture through the elevation of information by elaborating three aspects of its "infrastructure." These are bureaucracy, the emergence of expertise, and the evolution of information machinery.

The next five chapters of Postman's book discuss these ideas in detail and largely through examples. While the examples often describe striking problems and misdeeds of technopoly, it is important to stay on top of Postman's intellectual target which is to illustrate how technopoly redefines culture. Thus, while there are clearly terrible things that happen in the contemporary practice of medicine because of the degree to which technology has taken over, Postman's point throughout is to call attention to the very successful way in which technopoly has redefined what it is to be a doctor, including, of course, the whole relationship between doctor and patient. This is not a point that technopoly wants us to reflect upon; hence, we are consistently encouraged not to think about these matters but, instead, to always think of these changes as simply "progress." E.g., "Doctors don't practice medicine the same way anymore; but that has happened in the name of progress and better medical care." So long as we can accept it all as "progress," then we are discouraged from taking any critical look at what has happened. The cult of progress goes hand in hand with the cult of technology in advancing the regime of technopoly.

While Postman advances good points in the remainder of this book, his chapter on language as an "invisible technology" is probably the most important because, the least anticipated. Contrary to the technopolist's inevitable judgment that "it's just semantics!" language use exercises power in the world and, in particular, adjusts our relationships with objects. Therefore, not only is language a powerful but transparent "technology" but it is precisely the mode through which technopoly exercises its attack on culture by redefinition. A particularly insidious aspect of this attack through language lies in the process of questioning. As Postman observes, questions are directive. The way a question is asked inevitably determines the range and possibilities of answers. The cultural domination of technology today is frequently facilitated by the language through which we discuss the presence of technology in our society, and that language sets clearly the range of questions about technology and its roles that can be allowed.