Rating: 
Summary: Social science as story-telling
Review: I heard Neil Postman on a radio interview for this book, several years before I read "Amusing Ourselves to Death," which I consider a better book. I went back and read Technopoly, because it is (for better or for worse) in many respects a classic in the field. After reading "Disappearance" and "Objections," I've found that Postman does a good job maintaining a basic premise or thesis throughout all of his books. In technopoly, Postman offers an interesting perspective on those who would "gaze on technology as a lover does on his beloved," known as technophiles, and those who are on the other end of the spectrum, I'll call them technocritics. This is a book that clearly defines the potential problems that we may incur if we blindly allow technology to answer society's most pressing questions. As a quantitative researcher, who recognizes that a qualitative approach is sometimes necessary to tease out the richness of data (perhaps later to be empirically tested), I really enjoyed Postman's perspectives in the chapter titled "Scientism." In this chapter, and throughout the whole book, Postman included wonderful little vignettes: "Freud once sent a copy of one of his books to Einstein, asking for his evaluation of it. Einstein replied that he thought the book was exemplary but was not qualified to judge its scientific merit." I see there are several other reviews, and so as not to make mine too long, let me end with this summation: Postman is a good writer and he's got lots of interesting threads of reasoning in this book. Not all of his arguments have a tremendous amount of backing, but you will gain valuable persepectives that you may not have thought of/about previously. From that standpoint, and the fact that his paperbacks aren't extremely expensive, I recommend adding it to your shopping basket.
Rating: 
Summary: A profoundly important and often disturbing book
Review: This is one of those books that make you think the only reason it isn't permanently on the New York Times Bestseller List (or the top 100 of the Amazon.com list) is because the general public is either too afraid to read it after seeing the subtitle, or people in power have been doing everything they can to render it unattractive. With every new innovation and social argument today, from birth control and feminism to the media and privacy, we all find ourselves suspiciously willing to turn over every intellectual rock and make hamburger out of every sacred cow in the search for enemies, heroes, reasons and justifications for our beliefs and actions. Yet with fear and trembling we all ignore this one- which Neil Postman makes all too clear may be the only one we should be discussing: the surrendering of all of our true sense of freedom, independence, responsibility and community to the wrathful, jealous god of Technology. In the opening to the book he quotes a philosopher who sums up his entire point with an idea that puts our entire cultural period into a disturbing perspective: regardless of its basis in scientific innovation and theory, technology "is a branch of moral philosophy, not science." The mere thought that our entire world and the daily transformations taking place in it may be in the wrong hands- at our request- and that THAT is the explanation for the incredible degree of unquestioned, unexamined change, is enough to make you afraid of your computer. And remember, this book was published years before Dolly the cloned sheep came to town, or we were anywhere near as close to charting the entire human genome. (Like the relationship of Einstein's theories to the Manhattan Project, with that alone we have no idea what world we are in store for or what war in the twenty-first century will be like; yet we go blindly onward, giving our scientific leaders and CEOs of industry carte blanche, without questioning if we have a choice.) Postman simply makes it clear that the people who are taking us where we are headed don't really know what they're doing anymore than we do in terms of the implications for our culture- or any culture's- future, and really don't care. Because they have sold their souls to the idea of progress and markets- falling in line with the dictates of the cult of technology. Many countries around the world see Globalization as little more than the Americanization of the world, like Rome around the time of Christ. Postman's TECHNOPOLY makes it clear that that force may have malevolent implications because it could actually be built upon the transformation of American democracy and culture into that of technological fascism. With every chapter, some almost hilarious in the little absudities we live by made clear, some scary in their implications and explanations of the seemingly unrelated ills of our world, Neil Postman creates one of the greatest and most important diagnoses of the Achilles heel of modern Western Society ever written. TECHNOPOLY is prophetic, and like every prophet, what he has to say will only be apocalyptic to our world if we choose to ignore it.
Rating: 
Summary: Interesting ideas that have little to do with technology
Review: Postman discusses things that he finds wrong with the world, but there is very little connection between these ideas and technology. However, if you're interested in these things, then parts of this book might be a good read: * why opinion polls are not useful (Chapters 5, 8); * why efficiency and progress are not worthy goals (Ch. 3); * why human qualities cannot be ranked or measured (Ch. 1, 8); * why statistics do not often reflect reality (Ch. 8); * whether or not social science is really a science (Ch. 9); * why you should distrust medical doctors (Ch. 6); * why traditions and religious narratives should not be thrown away (Ch. 3, 9, 10); and * how education could improve society (Ch. 11).
Rating:
Summary: This is a Provocative, Informative, and Disturbing Book!
Review: There is much to learn from this important book. Over the last two hundred years, both science & technology have rapidly & irrevocably changed the face of the earth. In the postindustrial world, we've banished infectious diseases from our midst (at least temporarily), have instituted public health & sanitation measures, and have made creature comfort a part of everyman's lifestyle. Yet, there is profound and widespread concern regarding exactly where technological innovation is taking us, what this mysterious journey will cost us in terms of a sustainable and palatable ecosystem, and exactly who (if anyone) is driving this huge and anonymous innovative juggernaut. This book deals provocatively with this issue; i.e. the promulgation of a culture in which science and technology have come to assume the pivotal role in our society. Sociologist Max Weber warned almost 100 years ago of an alarming tendency in western civilization to displace our tradition-based religious cultural ethos with a dangerously superficial "faux" rationality in which all decisions and all measures would come to be made more and more exclusively by scientific and logical means. Yet science by its very nature cannot answer questions dealing with values, advising us as to what is right, or good, or best. It can only speak to us in terms of effective and efficient means to achieve such cultural values and social ends. It is this tension between a human-oriented cultural ethos, on the one hand, and scientific progress through technological innovation not so oriented on the other that is Mr. Postman's real subject. Mr. Postman understands that science and technology are both our friends and our antagonists, and as our amigo the Unabomber has pointed out, what technical innovation introduces as "voluntary and optional" soon becomes "compulsory and obligatory", as did the introduction of automobiles and traffic regulation. In this fashion, by flooding our social, economic, and political environment with items and objects that drive the nature of society as much as enhance it (can anyone now doubt that the introduction of personal computers poses such a double-bind?), we are radically changing the nature of our society and its culture without benefit of any guiding values, precepts, or notions as to what is best for our people and our community other than to allow frenzied competition between technological rivals to see who can unlease the latest/neatest technological innovation to make our lives easier or entertain us more cleverly. Our direction in terms of progress seems to be random, at best, and Postman argues most persuasively that there are hidden dangers to our freedoms, our prosperity, and even our awareness that result from this surrender to the indifferent impulses of technological innovation. We best recognize this indifference and the dangers it poses for a free and open society. As author Sales Kirkpatrick notes in his wonderful book "Rebels Against the Future", "technology is never neutral"; it carries out its exclusively rational and logical intent to its conclusion. Yet often the fact that this conclusion is not necessarily in the public interest or consistent with the long-term goals and aspirations of our culture seems somehow irrelevant. Yet it is anything but irrelevant; it is central to the question as to how critically important decisions regarding our future and well-being are to be made, and on what basis. Will we have a society in which such decisions are made through open debate in a public forum, or one in which the decisions are made for us, based on market projections, what can be sold and distributed, researched based on its sales potential in anonymous test tubes and clinical labs, where the latest in scientific certainty is readied for pandemic public introduction? Time is growing short and we must soon decide. This is a fascinating, provocative, and important book. Read it!
Rating:
Summary: Postman, heal thyself
Review: For two semesters, I've taught out of *Technopoly*, and Isympathize with many of the points in it. Scientism bothers me, andI'm always going on about the Popperian criterion, that a scientific proposition must be falsifiable. So I was disappointed to see Postman fall prey to the same fallacies he criticizes. For example, he repeats the tired old error that Einstein proved "everything is relative" and so morals don't matter-- a classic example of the equivocal fallacy, as neither of Einstein's theories of relativity had anything to say about moral relativism. Postman also misrepresents BF Skinner's vision of humanity: "The automaton to be redeemed by a benign technology." Anyone who bothers to read Skinner will find that he regards human beings as feeling, thinking, flesh-and-blood creatures. More broadly, Postman proceeds on the explicit assumption that science and religion are irreconcilably at odds, when in fact, science has nothing whatever to say about religious propositions. It is only when religious authorities presume to make testable claims about the natural world that science might come to bear. To think otherwise is to give science powers that it doesn't have-- in a word, it's scientism. Postman's nostalgia for an age of religion-induced "certainty" left me totally cold. Certainty about what is most uncertain? No, thank you. That is the kind of comforting "certainty" that has given us evils ranging from quack medicine to ethnic cleansing. Most disturbingly of all, Postman indulges in the very "agentic shift" that he rightly criticizes, saying essentially that a technology will do what it is designed to do. Who has designed it? To do what, and to whom? Such questions are swallowed up in the passive voice and Postman's anthropomorphization of technology. Amid all the talk of conquest and oppression, there is a conspicuous absence of conquerors and oppressors, a notable omission in what purports to be a historical overview of technology. I more or less agree with his final point, that elementary and secondary education should emphasize fundamental, classical disciplines like logic. Such training might result in fewer books like *Technopoly*, or at least equip more readers to spot the obvious errors. END
Rating:
Summary: Postman, heal thyself
Review: For two semesters, I've taught out of *Technopoly*, and I sympathize with many of the points in it. Scientism bothers me, and I'm always going on about the Popperian criterion, that a scientific proposition must be falsifiable. So I was disappointed to see Postman fall prey to the same fallacies he criticizes. For example, he repeats the tired old error that Einstein proved "everything is relative" and so morals don't matter-- a classic example of the equivocal fallacy, as neither of Einstein's theories of relativity had anything to say about moral relativism. Postman also misrepresents BF Skinner's vision of humanity: "The automaton to be redeemed by a benign technology." Anyone who bothers to read Skinner will find that he regards human beings as feeling, thinking, flesh-and-blood creatures. More broadly, Postman proceeds on the explicit assumption that science and religion are irreconcilably at odds, when in fact, science has nothing whatever to say about religious propositions. It is only when religious authorities presume to make testable claims about the natural world that science might come to bear. To think otherwise is to give science powers that it doesn't have-- in a word, it's scientism. Postman's nostalgia for an age of religion-induced "certainty" left me totally cold. Certainty about what is most uncertain? No, thank you. That is the kind of comforting "certainty" that has given us evils ranging from quack medicine to ethnic cleansing. Most disturbingly of all, Postman indulges in the very "agentic shift" that he rightly criticizes, saying essentially that a technology will do what it is designed to do. Who has designed it? To do what, and to whom? Such questions are swallowed up in the passive voice and Postman's anthropomorphization of technology. Amid all the talk of conquest and oppression, there is a conspicuous absence of conquerors and oppressors, a notable omission in what purports to be a historical overview of technology. I more or less agree with his final point, that elementary and secondary education should emphasize fundamental, classical disciplines like logic. Such training might result in fewer books like *Technopoly*, or at least equip more readers to spot the obvious errors.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent Analysis of Technology Usage
Review: The best thing to understand about this book is that Postman doesn't hate "Technology" or condemn it. He isn't a Luddite or anything. He shows that "Technology" is very useful in solving problems while it often times creates other problems. I am a student majoring in Information Technology while concentrating in Database Design and Implementation. I love technology and it is definitely what I want to do. But, books like Postman's keeps you focused on what the real purpose of technology is. Postman touches on the fact that we are drowning in our own information. In history there has always been outlets for information. Knowledge was sacred and only passed on through certain avenues. This involved churches, schools, apprenticeships, etc. Now with the revolution of a Global Community, the transfer of data is instantaneous and removed from its context. This is a very good book. Postman writes with a fluid intellectual tone. I have just ordered another one of his books "The End of Education: Redefining the Value of School". I feel that with the change in how are world is viewed and how we view ourselves within that context, it is important to discuss something such as education because it will surely be drastically affected by this change.
Rating:
Summary: Lack of Control
Review: While I totally disagree with Postman's view that Technology is somehow a hulking stalker-in-the-night creature that is stealing away our values and culture, his point is though-provoking, if overly dramatic. While Postman has an entertaining wit and humor, his information is often awry and misguided. Though his point that technology must be examined, questioned, and taken control of by humanity is one that should be taken up and heralded by us all, the idea of technology on its own taking over our lives is entirely off base. Read this book if you want to ask questions about the ongoing technological "advances," but don't expect any clear answers, or, for that matter, any real information.
Rating:
Summary: Technology's hold on culture examined
Review: This book presents a good overview of the state of our culture, with it's worship of technology. Postman does not deny that there are benefits of technological advances, but that there are incredible losses when technology is placed at the center of society. Postman uses wit and humour to make his points, which helps the lay reader to keep engaged. His recommendations at the end show that he is not cynical, though realistic about what can be done.
Rating:
Summary: Technopoly
Review: This entertaining romp through the harder reaches of technological determinism presents a more radical assessment of technology's impact on society. The history and logic are sound, if at times unsupportable. Postman is nothing if not inflammatory, and his is a voice that is not only accessible, but probably necessary. His genius is using the very technologies he pretends to decry to give us pause to think about them ourselves. This is good work that I don't take seriously beyond that most valuable of services. He is one of a kind, and this book will receive plenty of negative reviews. In case you missed it, this isn't one of those.
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