Technopoly

First published in 1992, Technopoly is an essential text on media, describing a society in which technology is deified. That is, “the culture seeks its authorisation in technology, finds its satisfactions in technology, and takes its orders from technology.”

Prior to this, author and educator Neil Postman wrote Amusing Ourselves to Death, where he argued that society was mirroring Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. In Huxley’s text, people were enslaved by means of addiction to amusement, or media consumption. As opposed to George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, where people were oppressed by state violence.

You almost have to read both of Postman’s texts as a pair, because they’re equally compelling. They take Marshall McLuhan’s “the medium is the message” theory from Understanding Media and run with a maximalist interpretation of it. That is, the communication medium should be the focus of study rather than the message itself, which is pretty much the underlying philosophy of every media book I’ve read. For Postman, television in particular was destructive to public discourse, with style trumping substance.

The thesis of Technopoly is basically that technologies were intended as tools, to be used with restraint and context. Postman argues that Western societies — particularly the United States — have elevated technology into an all-encompassing worldview, dictating how people think, assign value, and organise societies. Rather than be a means to an end, technological progress becomes an end in itself. displacing traditional humanist philosophy and religion.

In the age of social media, I would interpret it as a reminder that one shouldn’t look to creators of contemporary technologies for advice on how to use them. Which in turn calls to mind one of my favourite lines from the philosopher Nassim Taleb: “Never ask a barber if you need a haircut.” I won’t name any names, but at the very least, one should treat the optimism of today’s Silicon Valley oligarchs with a healthy dose of scepticism.

Technology’s role in society is summarised in three stages: Tool-using cultures where technology has specific purposes; technocracies where those tools begin to challenge traditional authority and morality, becoming central to everyday life; and technopolies where technology becomes culture itself. Truth, morality, and value are now determined by technological and quantitative standards. One could make a pretty compelling case that the age of surveillance capitalism is exactly that.

One could criticise Postman for being pessimistic with Technopoly, that social conditions shape the use of technology, or that new technologies do little to shape human beliefs. You could argue about it until the sun comes up. I don’t think of Postman as being completely pessimistic, or speaking in purely dystopian terms. I see him as reminding the reader that technology ought to serve cultural and moral ends, not replace them. What you do with that is up to you.

While I feel like Postman could have delved deeper into the text’s various topics, Technopoly is still striking prescient in today’s age. His concerns about information glut, the authority of algorithms, and the erosion of shared meaning resonate strongly in today’s debates about AI, social media, and data-driven governance.