Technopoly, Neil Postman
Technopoly, Neil Postman
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Technopoly
The Surrender of Culture to Technology

Author: Neil Postman

Narrator: Jeff Riggenbach

Unabridged: 5 hr 39 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 02/14/2014


Synopsis

In this witty, often terrifying work of cultural criticism, Postman chronicles our transformation into a Technopoly: a society that no longer merely uses technology as a support system but instead is shaped by it. According to Postman, technology is rapidly gaining sovereignty over social institutions and national life to become self-justifying, self-perpetuating, and omnipresent. He warns that this will have radical consequences for the meanings of politics, art, religion, family, education, privacy, intelligence, and truth, as they are redefined to fit the requirements of the technological thought-world.

About Neil Postman

Neil Postman (1931–2003) was chairman of the Department of Communication Arts at New York University and founder of its Media Ecology program. He wrote more than twenty books. His son Andrew Postman is the author of five books, and his work appears in numerous publications.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Kressel on October 16, 2015

Neil Postman makes an argument in this book that will resonate with most religious people and will probably be rejected by everybody else. It’s an argument against Technopoly and its brother Scientism: the view that science and technology can answer all the problems in our lives. Clearly, science an......more

Goodreads review by Frieda on March 27, 2019

So much brain food. YUM. Postman has the rare ability to peel away all the layers of cultural biases that form our worldviews and to see each problem he addresses (and there are several large themes in this book - ie technology, statistics, education, popular culture, politics) with clear eyes, intel......more

Goodreads review by Mystie on August 29, 2024

Audible. Own paperback. Read with local book club. Postman has a great summary of the problems with information becoming a goal rather than a tool, and purposelessness breaking down personal effectiveness and agency, but his answer is to go back to secularism, which he calls "liberal democracy" and t......more

Goodreads review by Robert on November 07, 2013

This book was absolutely horrible. Written by an old man who resents the fact that the things he esteemed in his life are no longer as respected as they once were. This book can be summed up with 2 statements: 1. I hate that Science is making it difficult to hold onto my faith, and has enabled the ri......more

Goodreads review by Nathanael on October 15, 2009

Technopoly tells us that technology has an inherent viewpoint, a 'take' on reality. That's obvious. More unsettling is that Postman argues we adopt the viewpoint of the technology we use. For example, by naively citing social science we adopt Scientism--a scarily amoral view of reality. Postman's Te......more