Critique Essay - Neil Postman Technopoly





Introduction

Neil Postman's book Technopoly, defines how techno-poly is associated with society in terms of technology. According to this book, a culture acquires authorization in technology and takes order from technology. However, technology has many drawbacks especially in terms of its implication over the culture. My thesis statement is that the technology does have positive as well as negative effects over the culture.

Discussion

The significant importance of Postman is over the technology, in terms of whether it is good or bad. According to Postman, technology fosters the fundamental change which actually forbade keeping us with older reality with an added advantage, i.e. new technology and a new reality. As a matter of fact, it modify the conventional thoughts and habits and gives us a paradigm of what is “new real” - modern reality. In order, to better elucidate this theory, Postman gives the example of a clock, and states that this was made primarily to mark the canonical hours in the monasteries. According to Kejntzen (2012), the fundamental idea of Postman pertaining to the impact of technology over the community, seems to be holding grounds.

According to Postman, there are diversified ways in which people adopt the idea of reality in terms of ways created by technology. Postman additionally quotes “tool using cultures” this means that the tools used to crack the most complex problems or caters the various facts of life such as religion, art, politics etc (Postman, 1992). However, in contrast, tools in the context of technocracy play a significant role in the culture of the world. In order to give a better understanding of the theory, Postman gives the example of three technologies; such as, clock, printing press and telescope (Postman, 1992). As a matter of fact, there have been several ...