Technopoly by Neil Postman: Book Review
“All things are lawful unto me, but all things are not expedient: all things are lawful for me, but I will not be brought under the power of any.”
It is hard to overstate the problem of the affects of technology, especially information and media technology, on society. In the last 80 years, we've gone from a world in which the presence of television in a household was a rarity, into one in which the a non-stop stream of chunks of information, images, and videos, are bombarding us by the second. Its important to think about practical solutions to the problems of information overload, reduced attention span, and the decline in the quality of public discourse - but its also important to think about the assumptions of "technological worldview", and answer the every present question: Where does your hope, lie?
Neil Postman, renowned NYU professor of communications, wrote his book in the early 1990s, during which the internet era could be surmised, but not yet experienced. His subtitle "the surrender of culture to technology", alludes to his thesis that Technology itself has replaced faith and tradition in the American conscience. Although Technopoly is a later book than Amusing Ourselves to Death, and it is a more ambitious book. Rather than the affects of a television vs. literary culture, he is interested in Technology as ideology, as the driving force in society. In this sense, it is closely related to Progressivism, the belief, in Rothbard's memorable phrase, that we are moving "ever onward and upward into the light". If upward to the light is our destination, then our vehicle is technology. To unflinchingly accept new technology when if comes along, ever faithful in its ability to solve our problems, is to inhabit a world in which technology is an idol. In search of vain pleasures of the present, we accept the Faustian bargain before understanding the terms. In a point repeated from Amusing Ourselves to Death, Postman tells us that every technology comes with an agenda of its own. For example, the invention of the internet, with a capability to send massive amounts of data around the world, necessitates exactly that - the affects of massive amounts of information flowing around the world are only seen later. In the beginning, we only see what we have to gain; at the end, we see what we lost.
Postman gives four reasons why America was so keen to embrace faith in technology (to become, in his words, a Technopoly). They are the American ethos of newness and progress, the genius of the robber barons, the easy to see upsides of technology, and the 19th century assault on traditionalism. On the third point, he states "To every Old World belief, habit, or tradition, there was and still is a technological alternative. To prayer, the alternative was penicillin; to family roots, the alternative is mobility; to reading, the alternative is television; to restraint, the alternative is psychotherapy; to political ideology, the alternative is popular appeal established through scientific polling."
Postman, while something of an agnostic himself, bemoans the fact that religion has been replaced with an unalterable belief in technology. The problem with this (besides the falsehoods inherit in the jettisoning of Christian truth) is that the worldview of science lacks a coherent narrative. In a prescient example, he compares a religious, but tool using culture to a new deck of cards that comes out Ace of spades, two of spades, and so on. One has an expectation for pieces of information; that they should fit orderly into the whole. In the scientific and technological world, exacerbated by mass media, information glut makes the world seems much more like a shuffled deck of cards. Information comes and goes quickly, with the relevance and truth of it scarcely judged. The deepest problems of life, after all, are not problems solved primarily by more information - and technology, especially modern information technology, seems only capably of providing more and more information, faster and faster. One must ask; what problem does this solve?
While Postman passionately argues that we should have a society wide conversation about the pros and cons of new technology before it is implemented, the catch, from my perspective, is that this is impossible. Society wide effects of television, while seen by some prophets, were not provable in the early days. Backlash is best done at the individual and local level, using hindsight to see the effects of new tech. Secondly, the people in charge of building technology are the technologists: our Silicon Valley overlords. By the time the government or the national conversation has reached any kind of consensus about the regulation of a new technology, it has often reached a critical mass of user adoption. This was certainly true of television and social media.
A Christian man or woman must be obedient to Christ in all things. This includes the use of technology. A few verses are relevant. In 1 Corinthians 6:12, Paul said, "All things are lawful unto me, but all things are not expedient: all things are lawful for me, but I will not be brought under the power of any. Technology addiction is an all to common phenomenon these days. It goes hand in hand with consumerism. People too often are defined by what they consume, than by what they produce. For example, do you define yourself by your favorite movies and TV shows, or favorite fictional characters? Or even by your favorite preachers? And ask yourself, does my experience with technology constitute an addiction or a substitute for time with the Lord? As Christians, we should spend more time thinking and building than passively consuming worldly information. Not that we should not consume at all. To the extent that we consume, Paul gives us instructions. In Romans 12:2, we are told to "be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God." And he tells us in 1 Timothy 4:13 "Till I come, give attendance to reading, to exhortation, to doctrine." So we are to be readers of Scripture, desiring the sincere milk of the word, and to exhort other believers, and evangelize the lost. Modern information technology acts as a slippery slope on which our Christian walk can falter, we are to regard it as a dangerous substance. Perhaps to be used, but never to use us.