alexseanchai | 100 college things 69: so I'm reading neil postman's "technopoly" for class

Karl Marx quote on the first page of today's reading. "[I]s the Iliad possible at all when the printing press and even printing machines exist? Is it not inevitable that with the emergence of the press, the singing and the telling and the muse cease; that is, the conditions for epic poetry disappear?"

Dude, I'm really fond of certain other things you said, but uh that sounds like a challenge.

A little further on, I'm having a mad at the book. So first the author defines 'technocracy':

tools play a central role in the thought-world of the culture. Everything must give way, to some degree, to their development. The social and symbolic worlds become increasingly subject to the requirements of that development. Tools are not integrated into the culture; they attack the culture. They bid to become the culture. As a consequence, tradition, social mores, myth, politics, ritual, and religion have to fight for their lives.

And then a lengthy digression on Copernicus and Kepler and Galileo and Newton and Bacon, and then this:

Technocracy did not entirely destroy the traditions of the social and symbolic worlds. Technocracy subordinated these worlds—yes, even humiliated them—but it did not render them totally ineffectual. In nineteenth-century America, there still existed holy men and the concept of sin. There still existed regional pride, and it was possible to conform to traditional notions of family life. It was possible to respect tradition itself and to find sustenance in ritual and myth. It was possible to believe in social responsibility and the practicality of individual action. It was even possible to believe in common sense and the wisdom of the elderly. It was not easy, but it was possible.

Strong implication in those words, flat-out stated in the next paragraph, that it is no longer possible to any of those things.

Which, uh, hi I am a queer atheist. The concept of 'sin' is actively anathema to me and I don't see how getting rid of it—not, I observe, that we collectively have, see Hobby Lobby decision—is a bad thing. So is the concept of 'traditional family life' in any definition of 'traditional' that excludes queer folks, and uh that's every Western or Christian definition of 'traditional family' older than maybe ten years. (You can really tell that the author of this book is a Western Christian.) I know a bunch of religious people who would probably like to have words with this author on the grounds of respecting tradition and finding sustenance in ritual and myth. And I'm an activist. Social responsibility and individual action is the whole point of activism.

Oh, and the strong implication from everything in this book so far is that dependence on technology is bad. Um. I thought social activity was a necessary thing for mental health? Guess where I get all of mine.

With the rise of Technopoly, one of those thought-worlds [that is, the traditional worldview] disappears. Technopoly eliminate 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 truth, by privacy, by intelligence, so that our definitions fit its new requirements. Technopoly, in other words, is totalitarian technocracy.

As I write (in fact, it is the reason why I write), the United States is the only culture to have become a Technopoly.

I can't even words my problems with this statement.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

So glad you're reading that instead of me. I feel your pain.

Yeah, I wasn't really expecting to hear about the evils of technology when I signed up for this course...

Oh, dear. That's awful!

Even the starting quote:
No, it is not inevitable at all. In fact, the only place I read epic poetry any more is... ysabetwordsmith's blog.

Which is online.

Using all that eeeeevul social technology that's supposed to ruin r chillunz or something.

/snark

I'm sorry you're having to read that.

I'm not sure ysabetwordsmith writes what Marx would admit is epic poetry, though...the Iliad is REALLY long. But yes.

Without the modern technology to perform a c-section, I am not at all sure both I and my older child would have survived his birth. I *probably* would have survived a forceps delivery, and he *probably* would have been possible to get out that way. How much damage we'd each have sustained though ... *shudder*. Not to mention that forceps are also technology, only about 400 years old.

My second baby was even bigger, and I never even managed to go into labour properly with him.

Another very precisely-manufactured piece of technology lives inside me, massively reducing my risk of any more pregnancies, and as a bonus stopping the happy fun joy that is menstruation.

When people talk about how everything was much better before technology came along, they may not mean it personally, but it feels pretty personal.

Technology lets me speak to/communicate with my valued older relatives on a regular basis, and helps build the family relationships between them and my children. And build relationships and participate in political activism. Or to play my part as a citizen - I regularly participate in consultations from my local government body on infrastructure projects.

Technology like the washing machine, dishwasher, vacuum cleaner, tumble-dryer, fridge, freezer, microwave, kettle & toaster: keeping us fed and clean without having to spend hours a day on manual labour.

Central heating and electric lighting mean we can stay warm year round and read / talk to each other after sunset without risking lungfuls of smoke or burning down our house.

Let's hear it for technology!

Nodnod! Though to be scrupulously fair to Postman, I don't think he has a problem with technology per se, it's just its effects on culture he's worried about...

Effects on culture like freeing up women and poor people from backbreaking labour so that they can participate in the culture.

Yeah, good point, though—again to be scrupulously fair—I think he made the point earlier that to whom the good? Because all the benefits to the 1% and yadda, though not in those words.

...no, culture is not destroyed with the advent of technology. It changes, yes, sometimes so much that it is unrecognizable, but it does not destroy nor subjugate, nor, for that matter, make them invisible.

I would say that it's now easier to record, pass on, and find others who share your culture, thanks to technology.

Yes yes yes.

Please, PLEASE send me the ISBN for this piece of drivel. I need something to read and MOCK when I feel particularly aggressive and annoyed by STUPID in general, and mocking an inanimate object or its contents is /definitely/ something I prefer to getting into not-an-argument-frustration-talking "discussions" with hubby or kiddo. You know the ones, where you're already het up under the collar and they just happen to say the wrong thing? LOL.

As for the actual "points"? Specious at best. Start with "traditional family"-- It's, to put it politely, a pile of the material produced from the south end of a north-facing bull. Or chicken.

It's not even useful for fertilizer, as it hasn't been checked in the SLIGHTEST for accuracy.

How many people had more than one marriage due to the death of a spouse? How many children grew up with first a mother and father, then mother and stepfather, then stepfather and stepmother (at this point, neither is related to the child by anything other than a legal chain of events)? Yet, it was /common/ for families to be broken by the death of a spouse in the American colonial period! My history teacher showed me ONE family tree where the oldest siblings were from the previous marriages of the traced legal marriage, down through about fifteen years, and /those/ children were as "unrelated" to the first five step-siblings as any stranger in the street. Inferences from legal documents were that they lived /as/ a single blended family, with the now-adult original five helping to pay for schooling for the youngest kids, for example.

So his original definition of "traditional family" should be poked as full of holes as any logical, English-speaking adult can find.

Point of order:Pin the author down on the definition of "sin"-- there are over a dozen words in Hebrew, Greek, and Aramaic, which have different connotations. Oathbreaking, "guilty" associations, violating a trust, etc. NOT all are equal, and that doesn't even get us to the words which mean "error" or "mistake" rather than "morally wrong"

And by this point, I've probably put more thought into the passage than the original writer did-- They're trying to sway readers with a vague "history was always like this" example, which cherrypicks /which/ technology is "good" and which is "bad."

'Nuff said.

ISBN 0679745408

a pile of the material produced from the south end of a north-facing bull

*cracks up*

100 college things 69: so I'm reading neil postman's "technopoly" for class

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Technology destroys culture by replacing it?

Re: Technology destroys culture by replacing it?