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Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology
In this witty, often terrifying work of cultural criticism, Postman chronicles our transformation into a a society that no longer merely uses technology as a support system but instead is shaped by it. According to Postman, technology is rapidly gaining sovereignty over social institutions and national life to become self-justifying, self-perpetuating, and omnipresent. He warns that this will have radical consequences for the meanings of politics, art, religion, family, education, privacy, intelligence, and truth, as they are redefined to fit the requirements of the technological thought-world.
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First published January 1, 1992
About the author
Neil Postman
52 books1,126 followersNeil Postman, an important American educator, media theorist and cultural critic was probably best known for his popular 1985 book, Amusing Ourselves to Death. For more than four decades he was associated with New York University, where he created and led the Media Ecology program.
He is the author of more than thirty significant books on education, media criticism, and cultural change including Teaching as a Subversive Activity, The Disappearance of Childhood, Technopoly, and Building a Bridge to the Eighteenth Century.
Amusing Ourselves to Death (1985), a historical narrative which warns of a decline in the ability of our mass communications media to share serious ideas. Since television images replace the written word, Postman argues that television confounds serious issues by demeaning and undermining political discourse and by turning real, complex issues into superficial images, less about ideas and thoughts and more about entertainment. He also argues that television is not an effective way of providing education, as it provides only top-down information transfer, rather than the interaction that he believes is necessary to maximize learning. He refers to the relationship between information and human response as the Information-action ratio.
He is the author of more than thirty significant books on education, media criticism, and cultural change including Teaching as a Subversive Activity, The Disappearance of Childhood, Technopoly, and Building a Bridge to the Eighteenth Century.
Amusing Ourselves to Death (1985), a historical narrative which warns of a decline in the ability of our mass communications media to share serious ideas. Since television images replace the written word, Postman argues that television confounds serious issues by demeaning and undermining political discourse and by turning real, complex issues into superficial images, less about ideas and thoughts and more about entertainment. He also argues that television is not an effective way of providing education, as it provides only top-down information transfer, rather than the interaction that he believes is necessary to maximize learning. He refers to the relationship between information and human response as the Information-action ratio.
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July 19, 2010
A large part of this is just stating what I would take to be pretty much the obvious. No ‘new technology’ is ever fully positive or fully negative. I can’t remember where I heard recently that an environment that has rabbits added to it is not, say, the Australian bush with rabbits, but actually a new environment. Technology does much the same thing with the human environment. The 1950s were not really just the 1940s with television added and the 2000s weren’t just the 1980s with the internet – new technologies create a new environment and that new environment has both benefits and disadvantages when compared with what came before.
Except, of course, we live in a world where we don’t like to talk about the disadvantages. Technology, in Mr Postman’s opinion, leads to Technopoly and Technopoly is a kind of society that is obsessed with the benefits of technology to the point where everything needs to be measure and assessed on the basis of how ‘efficient’ it is.
This is a book that challenges this cult of efficiency and that looks at some of the disadvantages technologies (particularly computer technologies) have brought to our world. This book was written in the early 1990s, i.e. well before the internet as we know it now. As you know, there have been quite a few books in the meanwhile talking about the negative impacts of the internet – particularly on quality journalism (if that is not an oxymoron).
It wouldn’t be fair to call Postman a Luddite – his criticism is both careful and intelligent. He points out that we have become obsessed with the scientific method – a method that we think is about measuring everything and about coming up with strict laws that the world is to conform to and that this is the aim of the ‘social sciences’ as well. There is a lovely part where he says that the nineteenth century created images of people that were presented to us by novelists, so Dickens might create a Uriah Heep and we might then use this character as a basis for categorising or understanding a certain type of person. Today we would be much less likely to do that, today we tend to base out character types on the work of social scientists, such as Freud, Erik Erikson, Marx and so on. This is an interesting change and an interesting observation. Postman says science is only properly applicable to processes, but the proper sphere for social ‘sciences’ is ‘practices’. The difference being that processes (such as water boiling) are measurable and conform to universal laws that are discoverable and describable. Practices, such as drinking tea (as strange as this may sound) are not universal and actually depend on a particular culture. When the tools of science are applied to practices, rather than processes, it is remarkable how often we are left with banalities masquerading as profundities. Postman quotes a study that found that most humans are afraid of death… I guess scientists may one day even have the technology to be able to prove that people like food and quite enjoy sex.
He makes the interesting point that we are a society obsessed with information, but that we have lost an overarching belief system that would allow us to filter that information and thereby make sense of it. Let me give you a case in point. The other night I received an email from someone I love very much that said that next month Mars would be closer to the Earth than it had for thousands of years and that it would appear to be about the size of the full moon in the night sky. It turns out that this is one of those bizarre hoaxes (I’ve never quite understood the joy people must get from spreading this stuff) – but Postman’s point is that we are so swamped today with useless and effectively meaningless information that we have become quite credulous. And why shouldn’t we be? We are confronted with an enormous ocean of information and most of it bombards us piecemeal as unconnected factoids.
There was a time when religion provided the overarching framework to judge the worth of information – but religion has lost its ability to play that role. However, we do need a way to separate the meal from the dross. Interestingly, he says that one of the few ways left in the US is the legal system. Courts have rules around what constitutes evidence and president and as such courts are one of the few remaining ‘arbiters of truth’ left in society – which Postman uses as a possible explanation for Americans' tendency to be quite so litigious.
He ends his book by talking about how to fix things. I tend to agree with him, but I can also see that many people would find this quite an unsatisfying part of the book. He points out that we should become loving freedom-fighters. This is from a part of the book that ought to make Americans feel very proud. It explains how the US has stood as an example to the rest of the world in its ongoing experiment in democracy. He also talks of the need to change the way we teach children – first that they need to become aware of the fact that what is worthwhile requires effort and second that they need to understand subjects have a history. In fact, he reiterates Marx’s view that all subjects are essentially history. That it is impossible to understand electricity without understanding the history of the concept, you know, from Maxwell on. I think this is wonderful advice – it does seem to be something the publishing world has jumped on recently, with lots of books published about say the potato or nutmeg or the number zero and the impact these have had through time.
There are nice things in this book about technologies and many things I didn’t know. I knew it was a huge innovation that zero was introduced into our numbering system, and that our placement system of numerals (0-9) made things infinitely easier for mathematics than Roman numerals. Imagine multiplying MCVI by CLXVII – except, as Postman points out, no one ever really did. Roman numerals were for writing numbers, not really for manipulation – arithmetic manipulation was done on counting machines like abacuses.
There is probably a little too much reliance on Popper’s views of science theory in the book – it is hard to imagine, but Popper’s theory of refutation isn’t the only theory in the history of the philosophy of science. Nevertheless, he does make a strong case for why science is really about limiting imagination and reducing, as much as possible, the number of hypothesises in any given subject. He gets this idea from The Ascent of Man. This is not meant as a criticism of science, but rather as a statement of nearly banal fact.
I think the main idea to take away from this book, though, is that despite our obsession with information it is probably not the case that what we need to fix any of the real problems facing us today is more information. Global poverty, for example, will not be solved by more information, nor will war or global warming. He makes the impressive rhetorical point that if computers had been invented before the atom bomb was developed that people would have said that we could not have invented the atom bomb without the computer. The fact that we did invent it without the computer does seem remarkable – and the fact it does seem remarkable says much about the culture we live in.
And the last thing I want to refer to before ending this review is that he has a very interesting take on the Milgram Experiment (the one where people administer electric shocks to people they cannot see up to the point where the people they cannot see appear to die, the test of authority and empathy). He points out that it is hard to know what this experiment really tells us. His view is that it tells us what people do in the very bizarre and unnatural setting of a psychology lab – and tells us remarkably little about what people are like in the real world. As he points out, how would we fit the Danes into this experiment, the ones who risked their lives to save Jews from Nazi death camps? Should we say the Danes contradicted Milgram’s experiment? Although I still find the Milgram Experiments deeply troubling, I do think he has a point that studying people in highly artificial environments should give us pause before accepting uncritically the conclusions from such studies.
Postman’s books are always thought-provoking – I enjoyed this one very much.
Except, of course, we live in a world where we don’t like to talk about the disadvantages. Technology, in Mr Postman’s opinion, leads to Technopoly and Technopoly is a kind of society that is obsessed with the benefits of technology to the point where everything needs to be measure and assessed on the basis of how ‘efficient’ it is.
This is a book that challenges this cult of efficiency and that looks at some of the disadvantages technologies (particularly computer technologies) have brought to our world. This book was written in the early 1990s, i.e. well before the internet as we know it now. As you know, there have been quite a few books in the meanwhile talking about the negative impacts of the internet – particularly on quality journalism (if that is not an oxymoron).
It wouldn’t be fair to call Postman a Luddite – his criticism is both careful and intelligent. He points out that we have become obsessed with the scientific method – a method that we think is about measuring everything and about coming up with strict laws that the world is to conform to and that this is the aim of the ‘social sciences’ as well. There is a lovely part where he says that the nineteenth century created images of people that were presented to us by novelists, so Dickens might create a Uriah Heep and we might then use this character as a basis for categorising or understanding a certain type of person. Today we would be much less likely to do that, today we tend to base out character types on the work of social scientists, such as Freud, Erik Erikson, Marx and so on. This is an interesting change and an interesting observation. Postman says science is only properly applicable to processes, but the proper sphere for social ‘sciences’ is ‘practices’. The difference being that processes (such as water boiling) are measurable and conform to universal laws that are discoverable and describable. Practices, such as drinking tea (as strange as this may sound) are not universal and actually depend on a particular culture. When the tools of science are applied to practices, rather than processes, it is remarkable how often we are left with banalities masquerading as profundities. Postman quotes a study that found that most humans are afraid of death… I guess scientists may one day even have the technology to be able to prove that people like food and quite enjoy sex.
He makes the interesting point that we are a society obsessed with information, but that we have lost an overarching belief system that would allow us to filter that information and thereby make sense of it. Let me give you a case in point. The other night I received an email from someone I love very much that said that next month Mars would be closer to the Earth than it had for thousands of years and that it would appear to be about the size of the full moon in the night sky. It turns out that this is one of those bizarre hoaxes (I’ve never quite understood the joy people must get from spreading this stuff) – but Postman’s point is that we are so swamped today with useless and effectively meaningless information that we have become quite credulous. And why shouldn’t we be? We are confronted with an enormous ocean of information and most of it bombards us piecemeal as unconnected factoids.
There was a time when religion provided the overarching framework to judge the worth of information – but religion has lost its ability to play that role. However, we do need a way to separate the meal from the dross. Interestingly, he says that one of the few ways left in the US is the legal system. Courts have rules around what constitutes evidence and president and as such courts are one of the few remaining ‘arbiters of truth’ left in society – which Postman uses as a possible explanation for Americans' tendency to be quite so litigious.
He ends his book by talking about how to fix things. I tend to agree with him, but I can also see that many people would find this quite an unsatisfying part of the book. He points out that we should become loving freedom-fighters. This is from a part of the book that ought to make Americans feel very proud. It explains how the US has stood as an example to the rest of the world in its ongoing experiment in democracy. He also talks of the need to change the way we teach children – first that they need to become aware of the fact that what is worthwhile requires effort and second that they need to understand subjects have a history. In fact, he reiterates Marx’s view that all subjects are essentially history. That it is impossible to understand electricity without understanding the history of the concept, you know, from Maxwell on. I think this is wonderful advice – it does seem to be something the publishing world has jumped on recently, with lots of books published about say the potato or nutmeg or the number zero and the impact these have had through time.
There are nice things in this book about technologies and many things I didn’t know. I knew it was a huge innovation that zero was introduced into our numbering system, and that our placement system of numerals (0-9) made things infinitely easier for mathematics than Roman numerals. Imagine multiplying MCVI by CLXVII – except, as Postman points out, no one ever really did. Roman numerals were for writing numbers, not really for manipulation – arithmetic manipulation was done on counting machines like abacuses.
There is probably a little too much reliance on Popper’s views of science theory in the book – it is hard to imagine, but Popper’s theory of refutation isn’t the only theory in the history of the philosophy of science. Nevertheless, he does make a strong case for why science is really about limiting imagination and reducing, as much as possible, the number of hypothesises in any given subject. He gets this idea from The Ascent of Man. This is not meant as a criticism of science, but rather as a statement of nearly banal fact.
I think the main idea to take away from this book, though, is that despite our obsession with information it is probably not the case that what we need to fix any of the real problems facing us today is more information. Global poverty, for example, will not be solved by more information, nor will war or global warming. He makes the impressive rhetorical point that if computers had been invented before the atom bomb was developed that people would have said that we could not have invented the atom bomb without the computer. The fact that we did invent it without the computer does seem remarkable – and the fact it does seem remarkable says much about the culture we live in.
And the last thing I want to refer to before ending this review is that he has a very interesting take on the Milgram Experiment (the one where people administer electric shocks to people they cannot see up to the point where the people they cannot see appear to die, the test of authority and empathy). He points out that it is hard to know what this experiment really tells us. His view is that it tells us what people do in the very bizarre and unnatural setting of a psychology lab – and tells us remarkably little about what people are like in the real world. As he points out, how would we fit the Danes into this experiment, the ones who risked their lives to save Jews from Nazi death camps? Should we say the Danes contradicted Milgram’s experiment? Although I still find the Milgram Experiments deeply troubling, I do think he has a point that studying people in highly artificial environments should give us pause before accepting uncritically the conclusions from such studies.
Postman’s books are always thought-provoking – I enjoyed this one very much.
January 15, 2012
There are some good ideas in this book, but only incidentally so- Postman himself delivers almost nothing of merit. Postman tends to come across as a curmudgeon in his writing, but in Amusing Ourselves to Death, he presented a reasonable, fairly robust argument that felt supported by evidence. Even when he was opining, his position was plausible. In Technopoly, he fails to develop a convincing hierarchy of technological development.
Postman never admits as much, but across his books he has a gigantic bias for some never-really-defined golden era of the United States, against which every development since is an attack. But, whereas in AOtD, Postman kept close enough to his evidence, here he is way, way beyond support of his x's. Massively overextended, he pontificates with out-of-the-blue, sensational claims without a whiff of evidence. He makes bold, universal, absolute declarations with a straight face and expects the reader to trust him. He tries to persuade readers of the legitimacy of his coined terms- tool-using, technocracy, technopoly- by just using the words themselves over and over and over and over. He uses fallacious arguments as well- diverting to strawman tactics and guilt-by-association workarounds to attack what he percieves as huge cultural enemies. He does not maintain rigor in his definitions, and without much elaboration or evidence to support his claims, the writing comes across as the scattershot rant of a drunk, paranoid uncle.
By the end of the book, Postman's thesis (never clearly formulated in the beginning) is butchered beyond coherence. His argument bounces all over the place in some spastic attempts, and by the end, the reader is expected to swallow some mumbo-jumbo, half-baked prescription for thwarting the Technopoly, contradicting himself numerous times even in the final few pages. I expected so much more.
Postman never admits as much, but across his books he has a gigantic bias for some never-really-defined golden era of the United States, against which every development since is an attack. But, whereas in AOtD, Postman kept close enough to his evidence, here he is way, way beyond support of his x's. Massively overextended, he pontificates with out-of-the-blue, sensational claims without a whiff of evidence. He makes bold, universal, absolute declarations with a straight face and expects the reader to trust him. He tries to persuade readers of the legitimacy of his coined terms- tool-using, technocracy, technopoly- by just using the words themselves over and over and over and over. He uses fallacious arguments as well- diverting to strawman tactics and guilt-by-association workarounds to attack what he percieves as huge cultural enemies. He does not maintain rigor in his definitions, and without much elaboration or evidence to support his claims, the writing comes across as the scattershot rant of a drunk, paranoid uncle.
By the end of the book, Postman's thesis (never clearly formulated in the beginning) is butchered beyond coherence. His argument bounces all over the place in some spastic attempts, and by the end, the reader is expected to swallow some mumbo-jumbo, half-baked prescription for thwarting the Technopoly, contradicting himself numerous times even in the final few pages. I expected so much more.
Read
April 22, 2012 Though Postman wrote this book in 1992, his ideas remain as relevant as ever in 2012. If he thought Technopoly was running rampant in '92, I can't imagine (well, I can) his disgust at technology's further rise to eminence in the past twenty years. If you're one who recognizes that facebook, iPhones, and Twitter actually have downsides, then you'll be intrigued by Postman's passionate arguments, ones that extend beyond electronic technology because, after all, the computer was in its infancy then.
Rather than choose a specific star rating, I'll allow my previous sentence to serve as my recommendation. The mere act of assigning the pleasure or thought-provoking-ness of the book a numerical, measurable value would feed into Technopoly's invisible technologies whose sole purpose is efficiency. By 'invisible technologies', Postman refers to the processes that occur under the radar, byproducts of "progress" that go largely unnoticed by the average person.
How this would then play out: By me giving the book a 3-star rating, I show that I buy into the belief that a reading experience can be quantified, the subsequent statistic therefore being much more easily managed/manipulated/analyzed to produce some kind of 'truth' about the quality of the book than a lengthy review.
Postman applies this to education, science, pop culture...all with entertaining criticism. At the beginning of the book, Postman informs his reader that he recognizes the benefits of technology, and the reader must keep that in mind because the majority of the book is Postman examining and bringing to light the effects of technology that we overlook, the negative effects. If you forget that his goal is to reveal technology's underbelly, you'd wrongly assume that Postman is against any technological advance.
He raises questions that I find especially relevant as a budding educator, questions that nevertheless pertain to anyone who chooses to think critically. Postman's overarching question (the same question he asks in The End of Education) is, What narrative can unify a people and give them purpose? Damn. What a question.
So how then will I live in the Technopoly of America? While I don't feel the need to abandon facebook (or my goodreads account), I'll need to continue questioning what I gain and lose through the use of those technologies and look upon the gods of efficiency, convenience, and 'progress' with a critical eye. I can enjoy some of the easy things, like a star rating system for books or movies or music, so long as I make sure to pursue the more enriching and subjective conversations about them, face-to-face, in the same room with friends. I'm up for the challenge.
Rather than choose a specific star rating, I'll allow my previous sentence to serve as my recommendation. The mere act of assigning the pleasure or thought-provoking-ness of the book a numerical, measurable value would feed into Technopoly's invisible technologies whose sole purpose is efficiency. By 'invisible technologies', Postman refers to the processes that occur under the radar, byproducts of "progress" that go largely unnoticed by the average person.
How this would then play out: By me giving the book a 3-star rating, I show that I buy into the belief that a reading experience can be quantified, the subsequent statistic therefore being much more easily managed/manipulated/analyzed to produce some kind of 'truth' about the quality of the book than a lengthy review.
Postman applies this to education, science, pop culture...all with entertaining criticism. At the beginning of the book, Postman informs his reader that he recognizes the benefits of technology, and the reader must keep that in mind because the majority of the book is Postman examining and bringing to light the effects of technology that we overlook, the negative effects. If you forget that his goal is to reveal technology's underbelly, you'd wrongly assume that Postman is against any technological advance.
He raises questions that I find especially relevant as a budding educator, questions that nevertheless pertain to anyone who chooses to think critically. Postman's overarching question (the same question he asks in The End of Education) is, What narrative can unify a people and give them purpose? Damn. What a question.
So how then will I live in the Technopoly of America? While I don't feel the need to abandon facebook (or my goodreads account), I'll need to continue questioning what I gain and lose through the use of those technologies and look upon the gods of efficiency, convenience, and 'progress' with a critical eye. I can enjoy some of the easy things, like a star rating system for books or movies or music, so long as I make sure to pursue the more enriching and subjective conversations about them, face-to-face, in the same room with friends. I'm up for the challenge.
August 10, 2015
Neil Postman makes an argument in this book that will resonate with most religious people and will probably be rejected by everybody else. It’s an argument against Technopoly and its brother Scientism: the view that science and technology can answer all the problems in our lives. Clearly, science and technology have solved some major problems the human race has faced, so it’s no wonder that it knocked religion of its throne in the Industrial Age. But just as religious leaders can be corrupt, so can scientists. They don’t deserve blind trust, yet in this day and age, men in white coats are almost automatically believed when they say, “This study proves. . .”
A corollary to this is the argument that not everything can be quantified. Surely something as ineffable as the intelligence of a human being cannot be summed up by a single number calculated by answers to a test. Yet we live in a world in which major decisions about our lives get made because of such numbers.
Now, sometimes Postman takes his argument a bit too far. For example, he described how the invention of the stethoscope gave doctors an excuse to listen less to patient input and more to the tool. After the stethoscope came other medical measuring tools, and they, in turn, invalidated doctors’ personal judgment. Who needs a doctor’s opinion? The machine measured X. It’s “objective.” The less we value human input, Postman argues, the more we have been taken over by Technopoly. I see his point, but stethoscopes have improved medicine, and I wouldn’t want to live in a world without them.
Unsurprisingly, the book includes a long section on computers, but it was published in 1992, before the popularization of the World Wide Web. Some of Postman’s predictions were prescient, and some are almost laughable. One thing is clear, though: he would have been appalled at the level we’ve allowed computers into our lives. Still, like with the stethoscope, their positive contribution is too big to ignore. Neil Postman makes a great case for humanity over machinery, but sometimes his strident tone can be a real turn-off.
A corollary to this is the argument that not everything can be quantified. Surely something as ineffable as the intelligence of a human being cannot be summed up by a single number calculated by answers to a test. Yet we live in a world in which major decisions about our lives get made because of such numbers.
Now, sometimes Postman takes his argument a bit too far. For example, he described how the invention of the stethoscope gave doctors an excuse to listen less to patient input and more to the tool. After the stethoscope came other medical measuring tools, and they, in turn, invalidated doctors’ personal judgment. Who needs a doctor’s opinion? The machine measured X. It’s “objective.” The less we value human input, Postman argues, the more we have been taken over by Technopoly. I see his point, but stethoscopes have improved medicine, and I wouldn’t want to live in a world without them.
Unsurprisingly, the book includes a long section on computers, but it was published in 1992, before the popularization of the World Wide Web. Some of Postman’s predictions were prescient, and some are almost laughable. One thing is clear, though: he would have been appalled at the level we’ve allowed computers into our lives. Still, like with the stethoscope, their positive contribution is too big to ignore. Neil Postman makes a great case for humanity over machinery, but sometimes his strident tone can be a real turn-off.
February 25, 2026
The first half or so sees Postman in much poorer form than Amusing Ourselves to Death as he does the "amateur, grossly-simplified cultural history" thing that many otherwise excellent writers do, falling prey to many clichéd canards and making statements about history that are far too assertive and unsubstantiated. Postman's sweet spot is current cultural criticism, and most of the book is top-notch in that regard. He certainly deserves to be placed among the great critics of modernity; to call him "prophetic" sounds banal, but entirely accurate (the chapters on "Computers" and "Scientism" in particular). His last chapter sees him turn to an Adlerian plea for a type of "democratic" humane education. This is mostly satisfactory and can serve as helpful inspiration for classical education, even if he does remain a liberal at heart. For those not of a religious persuasion, he demonstrates how an Enlightenment or progressive outlook can equally inform the common-sense view that the West is in crisis. Overall, not as focused and trenchant as Amusing Ourselves to Death, but unlikely to disappoint if you're at least somewhat sympathetic to his ideas.
P.S. The further we get from the Covid era, the more I believe that it laid on the table, before everyone's eyes, all the things that critics of modernity like Postman, Taylor, Girard, and MacIntyre had seen for decades.
P.S. The further we get from the Covid era, the more I believe that it laid on the table, before everyone's eyes, all the things that critics of modernity like Postman, Taylor, Girard, and MacIntyre had seen for decades.
October 3, 2009
Technopoly tells us that technology has an inherent viewpoint, a 'take' on reality. That's obvious. More unsettling is that Postman argues we adopt the viewpoint of the technology we use. For example, by naively citing social science we adopt Scientism--a scarily amoral view of reality. Postman's Technopoly is a negative description of modern American society--wholly taken into technological development, wholly sapped of social mores and the traditions that uphold them. Religion and liberal education have been replaced by bureaucracy and science. God and learning have been replaced by efficiency and progress. Postman is less interested with renewing the vigor of God and learning than with remarking on the stupidity of this exchange. As with any social critic, he's long on problems and short on solutions. Nonetheless, his chapter on Scientism is upsetting enough to make awareness of the problem the beginning of the solution.
If you have a computer or a phone, or have ever used one, read this book.
If you have a computer or a phone, or have ever used one, read this book.
July 28, 2017
So much brain food. YUM.
Postman has the rare ability to peel away all the layers of cultural biases that form our worldviews and to see each problem he addresses (and there are several large themes in this book - ie technology, statistics, education, popular culture, politics) with clear eyes, intelligence and so much humor. I cannot imagine what it must have been like to live in the 70s to 90s as the culture's Jeremiah without becoming angry or reclusive. Yet there is no bitterness. Rather, a constant underpinning of hope, as if Postman is reprimanding his (very intelligent) wayward children because he believes they can change.
It has been a long time since I was so influenced by a thinker and his work. What a man he was.
I'm writing down here one of his lines that I most want to remember:
"We must keep in mind the story of the statistician who drowned while trying to wade across a river with an average depth of four feet."
Postman has the rare ability to peel away all the layers of cultural biases that form our worldviews and to see each problem he addresses (and there are several large themes in this book - ie technology, statistics, education, popular culture, politics) with clear eyes, intelligence and so much humor. I cannot imagine what it must have been like to live in the 70s to 90s as the culture's Jeremiah without becoming angry or reclusive. Yet there is no bitterness. Rather, a constant underpinning of hope, as if Postman is reprimanding his (very intelligent) wayward children because he believes they can change.
It has been a long time since I was so influenced by a thinker and his work. What a man he was.
I'm writing down here one of his lines that I most want to remember:
"We must keep in mind the story of the statistician who drowned while trying to wade across a river with an average depth of four feet."
September 17, 2023
Достаточно условно связанные друг с другом три наблюдения:
1. Я определённо наслаждался тем, как это написано, несмотря на то, что из представленной в книге системы взглядов я разделяю, может, десятую часть (и считаю полной чушью половину).
2. Книга заметно разваливается на переходе к примерам "плохих технологий" (доказательная медицина, social science), когда мгновенно становится очевидно, что познания автора в этих вопросах находятся на уровне, достаточном только для брюзжания.
3. Учитывая что Постман предсказал информационную перегруженность современного мира (и роль компьютерных сетей в ней) и корректно идентифицировал рождение (с изобретением печатного пресса) письменной культуры, её роль в новой эпистемологии, и закат эпистемологии старой в обезьянних процессах — удивительно, что он не сделал финальный шаг и не предвидел возрождения оральной культуры, маскирующейся за внешними признаками письменной.
1. Я определённо наслаждался тем, как это написано, несмотря на то, что из представленной в книге системы взглядов я разделяю, может, десятую часть (и считаю полной чушью половину).
2. Книга заметно разваливается на переходе к примерам "плохих технологий" (доказательная медицина, social science), когда мгновенно становится очевидно, что познания автора в этих вопросах находятся на уровне, достаточном только для брюзжания.
3. Учитывая что Постман предсказал информационную перегруженность современного мира (и роль компьютерных сетей в ней) и корректно идентифицировал рождение (с изобретением печатного пресса) письменной культуры, её роль в новой эпистемологии, и закат эпистемологии старой в обезьянних процессах — удивительно, что он не сделал финальный шаг и не предвидел возрождения оральной культуры, маскирующейся за внешними признаками письменной.
August 30, 2024
Audible. Own paperback. Read with local book club.
Postman has a great summary of the problems with information becoming a goal rather than a tool, and purposelessness breaking down personal effectiveness and agency, but his answer is to go back to secularism, which he calls "liberal democracy" and try again. He thinks what we have "now" (in the 90s) is a new system from secularism rather than the product.
Postman has a great summary of the problems with information becoming a goal rather than a tool, and purposelessness breaking down personal effectiveness and agency, but his answer is to go back to secularism, which he calls "liberal democracy" and try again. He thinks what we have "now" (in the 90s) is a new system from secularism rather than the product.
November 7, 2013
This book was absolutely horrible. Written by an old man who resents the fact that the things he esteemed in his life are no longer as respected as they once were. This book can be summed up with 2 statements:
1. I hate that Science is making it difficult to hold onto my faith, and has enabled the ridicule of fundamentalism.
2. I hate that Social Science is displacing being well read when discussing opinions of public affair. E.G. - The psychologist's theory on human behavior is given more respect than the literary scholar's.
This is just another rebuke of modern culture written by someone who has refused to adapt to changes. I don't begrudge him his opinions, but I resent that this entire book can be summarized like this:
"I really don't like that culture does A, B, C, D, & E. I don't know how to fix this; solve the problem for me. Oh, and if you don't agree with my assertions then you are an idiot." - Neil Postman
It got 2 stars instead of 1 because as horrible as the content is, it is well written. You completely understand exactly what you don't agree with as you're reading it. It's a good example of persuasive writing, but infuriating to anyone who is informed on the subjects that he speaks on as the learned reader can spot his "white lies" (deliberate or born of ignorance, I'm not sure), incorrect assertions, and use of logical fallacies.
1. I hate that Science is making it difficult to hold onto my faith, and has enabled the ridicule of fundamentalism.
2. I hate that Social Science is displacing being well read when discussing opinions of public affair. E.G. - The psychologist's theory on human behavior is given more respect than the literary scholar's.
This is just another rebuke of modern culture written by someone who has refused to adapt to changes. I don't begrudge him his opinions, but I resent that this entire book can be summarized like this:
"I really don't like that culture does A, B, C, D, & E. I don't know how to fix this; solve the problem for me. Oh, and if you don't agree with my assertions then you are an idiot." - Neil Postman
It got 2 stars instead of 1 because as horrible as the content is, it is well written. You completely understand exactly what you don't agree with as you're reading it. It's a good example of persuasive writing, but infuriating to anyone who is informed on the subjects that he speaks on as the learned reader can spot his "white lies" (deliberate or born of ignorance, I'm not sure), incorrect assertions, and use of logical fallacies.
Read
July 29, 2021What Postman and I share is a deep-seated suspicion of technocratic governance. The difference is that my critique is essentially Marxist -- the idea of a "values-free," non-ideological panel of experts making decisions for us is both misguided and undemocratic, and liable to reproduce already-existing power structures. His critique is essentially romantic, that technology acts as a barrier to moral growth or self-actualization or some such thing. Regrettably, this angle is (mostly) bullshit.
It's a shame, considering that Amusing Ourselves to Death was at the very least a thought-provoking work. But by expanding his scope to technology as a whole, Postman generalizes beyond statements of much use-value, and a few good examples aside -- the overreliance on autopilot, thereby reducing human pilot readiness for emergencies, being an especially pointed and interesting example, especially given the rise of self-driving cars -- the whole argument falls apart.
It's a shame, considering that Amusing Ourselves to Death was at the very least a thought-provoking work. But by expanding his scope to technology as a whole, Postman generalizes beyond statements of much use-value, and a few good examples aside -- the overreliance on autopilot, thereby reducing human pilot readiness for emergencies, being an especially pointed and interesting example, especially given the rise of self-driving cars -- the whole argument falls apart.
May 12, 2017
I picked up this book immediately after I finished Postman's other book, amusing ourselves to death and while I think there is some overlap, I think both books are so well-written and so precise in their identification of the challenges of technology. I kept thinking "he doesn't even know about Google and Facebook yet!" Yet he is prophetic about the problems in science, data, overly technical medicine, etc. It's only gotten worse since the book was written. Postman is either a crank or a prophet of our time and I lean toward the latter.
November 4, 2024
Wow, this was a terrifying and very good critique of technology in America and the monopoly it has on our lives. Two parts that stood out to me were the chapter on technology in medicine and how harmful statistics are.
January 28, 2026
The value of reading original canon, like Technopoly, is you skip the discourse and go straight to the origin. So many twitter takes and anecdotes that form tech discourse today are merely poor riffs on ideas Postman presented 30 years ago.
And of course, Postman himself was merely a vessel of McLuhan, Ong, Illich, and others! It was particularly interesting to read Technopoly after "After Virtue" by MacIntyre, who come from totally different fields but arrive at similar diagnoses about our societal woes. The death of social institutions as information control mechanisms, the need for narrative and meaning in historical education, are all conclusions MacIntyre would have been familiar with.
The first half of the book is incredibly compelling, dense in anecdotes and frameworks that are still relevant today. Second half unfortunately falls into common tropes of tech criticism that was much less interesting e.g. stethescopes are bad. Postman concludes with a vision for humanist education. While not particularly distinctive, it strikes me that education continues to reappear as the actual solution to many societal problems, a la Rickover.
And of course, Postman himself was merely a vessel of McLuhan, Ong, Illich, and others! It was particularly interesting to read Technopoly after "After Virtue" by MacIntyre, who come from totally different fields but arrive at similar diagnoses about our societal woes. The death of social institutions as information control mechanisms, the need for narrative and meaning in historical education, are all conclusions MacIntyre would have been familiar with.
The first half of the book is incredibly compelling, dense in anecdotes and frameworks that are still relevant today. Second half unfortunately falls into common tropes of tech criticism that was much less interesting e.g. stethescopes are bad. Postman concludes with a vision for humanist education. While not particularly distinctive, it strikes me that education continues to reappear as the actual solution to many societal problems, a la Rickover.
November 11, 2012
There is much here to recommend to both those who are disquieted by technology and to those who wonder if we aren't losing our moral compass in our embrace of all things that distract and momentarily engage our flitting minds (minds, Postman would argue, increasingly shaped by the Technopoly we live in). As an educator, the Biggest Idea I took away from this book was the insight into the cataclysm now ravaging the public school system. Students come to us as the babes of technology culture and we, standing in the 400+ long tradition of the Book Culture, try to persuade them that reading, knowledge, wonder, and exploration are valuable. Silly teachers. We all know that the purpose of education these days is to make children into producers and consumers. The last chapter, with its proposition about how to rescue education, is intriguing and too "difficult to implement" for any bureaucrat. Postman suggests, afterall, teaching the history of each subject, therein connecting students with a grander narrative and a rich treasure trove of cultural symbols. It's a beautiful dream. Meanwhile, I am going to make a poster of this Cicero quote and post it on the door of my classroom: To remain ignorant of things that happened before you were born is to remain a child. Cheeky me.
August 17, 2025
rip uncle neil, he would have Hated chatgpt :( its actually amazing that he wrote this book over 30 years ago, it reads like a prophecy for 2025. really brilliant, perhaps should be required reading in schools these days. the kids (and adults) need to get it in their heads that technological progress is not equal to human progress!!!
October 30, 2026
Neil Postman’s most popular book, Amusing Ourselves to Death (1985), suggested that society could lose its capacity for critical thought when entertainment, especially television, becomes the dominant mode through which we consume information, politics, education, and other ideas in public discourse. He wasn’t the first to express such concerns, but he offered a particularly compelling argument that entertainment itself could become a mechanism of social control, even in a free and democratic society. Rather than embrace the pervasive technophilia of modern culture, Amusing Ourselves to Death advocates a cautious technoskepticism, reminding readers that 1) technology is not neutral, 2) technological advancement doesn’t necessarily mean social progress, and 3) society underestimates technology’s unintended consequences.
In Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology (1992), Postman expands this critique beyond electronic media to examine a more troubling possibility: that modern society has increasingly surrendered its authority to determine what is meaningful, valuable, and true to the technologies it creates. Tracing the transition from tool-using cultures through technocracies to technopolies, he argues that technology can acquire such overwhelming cultural authority that its underlying values become society’s own. Efficiency, quantification, and technical innovation stop functioning merely as instruments for achieving human objectives and become standards by which those objectives are judged. In other words, the danger is not that technology becomes more powerful, but that society gradually loses the ability to question what purposes that power should serve.
He’s particularly insistent that information shouldn’t be confused with knowledge. He rejects outright the common assumption that greater access to information automatically creates a more informed society. As search engines, social media, and artificial intelligence dominate so much of our lives, it’s easy to find ourselves in possession of more information than ever while simultaneously struggling to develop meaningful understanding. Postman’s criticism of quantification and technical expertise is especially relevant here: information becomes authoritative not necessarily because it improves judgment, but because it can be measured, processed, and distributed. Without the intellectual frameworks needed to distinguish meaningful knowledge from an abundance of disconnected facts, we’ll continue to succumb to what might be called information vertigo.
Postman sometimes writes as though technology possesses an agency of its own, rather than being shaped by human decisions and institutions. The rapid development and adoption of AI make his concerns increasingly persuasive, but also expose a limitation in his reasoning. He tends to underestimate the economic incentives, institutional forces, and government policies that influence which technologies emerge and how they develop. Consider his discussion of the printing press in the mid-fifteenth century. Gutenberg operated in an environment of growing demand for books and written information, particularly among religious and educational institutions, and had commercial incentives to reduce production costs. Yet the printing press eventually helped disseminate Protestant theology during the Reformation, a consequence Gutenberg could hardly have anticipated. Would he, himself a Catholic, have pursued the invention had he foreseen its role in challenging Catholic authority during the Reformation? It's an intriguing question, although ultimately unanswerable. The example illustrates Postman's argument about unintended consequences, but also suggests that technology's influence on culture cannot be separated from the human institutions that create, finance, and employ it. Technology undoubtedly shapes society, but society also shapes technology.
Upon publication, Technopoly received criticism for failing to offer a substantive solution to the problems it identified. But a good book needn’t both diagnose a problem and prescribe a solution. More than three decades later, Technopoly seems less like an outdated critique of technological enthusiasm than an increasingly relevant warning about the authority we grant technology. Postman is ultimately more persuasive as a cultural critic than as a comprehensive theorist of technological change. He demonstrates that technological progress and human progress are not necessarily synonymous, even if he sometimes underestimates the human agency that shapes both. The question is not whether we should continue developing more powerful technologies, but whether we can preserve the intellectual independence, cultural values, and moral judgment necessary to determine what those technologies ought to accomplish. A society that loses the ability to ask that question may eventually discover that, in its pursuit of progress, it has surrendered the very authority to define what progress means.
Or, as Paul Goodman put it much more punchily in a New York Review of Books article written a generation before Technopoly was published, and which Postman used as the epigraph of his book, “Whether or not it draws on new scientific research, technology is a branch of moral philosophy, not of science.”
In Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology (1992), Postman expands this critique beyond electronic media to examine a more troubling possibility: that modern society has increasingly surrendered its authority to determine what is meaningful, valuable, and true to the technologies it creates. Tracing the transition from tool-using cultures through technocracies to technopolies, he argues that technology can acquire such overwhelming cultural authority that its underlying values become society’s own. Efficiency, quantification, and technical innovation stop functioning merely as instruments for achieving human objectives and become standards by which those objectives are judged. In other words, the danger is not that technology becomes more powerful, but that society gradually loses the ability to question what purposes that power should serve.
He’s particularly insistent that information shouldn’t be confused with knowledge. He rejects outright the common assumption that greater access to information automatically creates a more informed society. As search engines, social media, and artificial intelligence dominate so much of our lives, it’s easy to find ourselves in possession of more information than ever while simultaneously struggling to develop meaningful understanding. Postman’s criticism of quantification and technical expertise is especially relevant here: information becomes authoritative not necessarily because it improves judgment, but because it can be measured, processed, and distributed. Without the intellectual frameworks needed to distinguish meaningful knowledge from an abundance of disconnected facts, we’ll continue to succumb to what might be called information vertigo.
Postman sometimes writes as though technology possesses an agency of its own, rather than being shaped by human decisions and institutions. The rapid development and adoption of AI make his concerns increasingly persuasive, but also expose a limitation in his reasoning. He tends to underestimate the economic incentives, institutional forces, and government policies that influence which technologies emerge and how they develop. Consider his discussion of the printing press in the mid-fifteenth century. Gutenberg operated in an environment of growing demand for books and written information, particularly among religious and educational institutions, and had commercial incentives to reduce production costs. Yet the printing press eventually helped disseminate Protestant theology during the Reformation, a consequence Gutenberg could hardly have anticipated. Would he, himself a Catholic, have pursued the invention had he foreseen its role in challenging Catholic authority during the Reformation? It's an intriguing question, although ultimately unanswerable. The example illustrates Postman's argument about unintended consequences, but also suggests that technology's influence on culture cannot be separated from the human institutions that create, finance, and employ it. Technology undoubtedly shapes society, but society also shapes technology.
Upon publication, Technopoly received criticism for failing to offer a substantive solution to the problems it identified. But a good book needn’t both diagnose a problem and prescribe a solution. More than three decades later, Technopoly seems less like an outdated critique of technological enthusiasm than an increasingly relevant warning about the authority we grant technology. Postman is ultimately more persuasive as a cultural critic than as a comprehensive theorist of technological change. He demonstrates that technological progress and human progress are not necessarily synonymous, even if he sometimes underestimates the human agency that shapes both. The question is not whether we should continue developing more powerful technologies, but whether we can preserve the intellectual independence, cultural values, and moral judgment necessary to determine what those technologies ought to accomplish. A society that loses the ability to ask that question may eventually discover that, in its pursuit of progress, it has surrendered the very authority to define what progress means.
Or, as Paul Goodman put it much more punchily in a New York Review of Books article written a generation before Technopoly was published, and which Postman used as the epigraph of his book, “Whether or not it draws on new scientific research, technology is a branch of moral philosophy, not of science.”
March 25, 2021
When considering the impact of technology on modern society, the narrative is often framed as being between those who promote and push forward with developing technology and those who oppose it. Neil Postman argues that this is incorrect, and that the real frame of conflict is between technology and everyone else.
This narrative may seem unnecessarily confrontational and dramatic, but Postman makes a compelling argument. He details his points as to how technology is seen as a close friend, giving unconditionally its gifts to society and allowing us to avail of its use. He finds it important however to moderate the din of its enthusiasts by presenting his dissenting voice of opposition in which he details why he thinks that technology and its uncontrolled adoption and diffusion into society can contain many harmful effects. Technology is a friend he concedes, but it also has a dark side and its gifts come with costs.
A common underlying theme throughout the book was that although technology has changed over time - indeed very rapidly over the last 150 years - the human brain and our social, mental, spiritual and physical needs have remained the same. Technology has not been able to allow us to rise above our very human constraints - and nor should it - for it is but an advancement of our tools, not our type. With this understanding, we can see how technology may introduce new links into society which leave our human brains and their modes of functionality at a clear disadvantage.
Postman goes on to state that whenever we admit a new technology into our society, we should do so with cautious, weary eyes rather than the unfettered enthusiasm of a child excited about a new toy. Often a technology can introduce or even permanently alter our ways of establishing truth, knowledge and justice. Even with the introduction of the mathematical concept of zero, new ideas such as that of calculable debt were able to change how an economic and ownership system functioned.
New technology can also change what words mean. 'Evidence' may have historically been understood to mean witness testimony, but its definition has arguably been expanded to include technological evidence such as image captures or video footage. This has also changed what we mean when we say we 'know' what may have happened.
One very insightful example that has spared no-one in its effects was that given of the clock. According to Neil Postman, who himself references Lewis Mumford, clocks were initially used inside Monasteries where they helped to alert and inform the religious devotees as to the timings of their proscribed rituals. Once it was taken outside of the Monastery walls however, it permeated society and became a tool to synchonrise the actions of men and allowed the birth of modern Capitalism and the 9-5 as we know it. One could have hardly predicted its wide-ranging consequences when the technology was being introduced then, so will we take heed to this principle going forth? That is up to us.
Other examples include how to spread of the Printing Press eventually led to an attack of the millennia-old Oral Tradition, and how the invention of the Telescope played a pivotal part of the disintegration of Christianity in Europe via the claims of Earth not being the centre of the universe and humans being removed from their pedestal of sacred uniqueness and importance. The subsequent decline of tradition and religion in Europe and America led to belief in the idea of constant moral, economic and social progress, the same idea which fuels our blind trust in technology today by virtue of association. Postman goes on to argue that we have now come to the point where we have replaced our idea of human progress with that of technological progress, our conflating of the two has led to the latter's triumph.
Further commentary on the state of information overload the average person experiences on a daily basis allows Postman to raise further questions on how we have come to accept our current state. While some may adopt the idea that being advertised to is a normal fact of modern day life, I found it insightful and thought provoking to understand that the best sources of knowledge are often the most restrictive in what they are allow to teach and be taught. The example given of a University was something I found which described this best. As part of a university course, we are expected to limit our inputs to a limited number of verified and agreed upon sources. This limitation does not necessarily lower the quality of the knowledge gained, rather it is increased because of it. Here, quality is truly prioritised over quantity - so why do we accept anything less than this standard in day to day life?
We are continuously bombarded with information and see the addition of information from endless sources as a proof of our continuous advancement, but as shown - the best institutions for higher learning always limit their inputs. Should we not take our lesson from them? I also found it interesting when Neil Postman commented that Plato and Aristotle did not associate the need for efficiency and productivity with the refinement of a man's mind. For them, the ideas did not mix. Achieving high efficiency and productivity was the goal of laborious work destined for slaves, it was not necessarily something which aided in the cause of human moral and intellectual advancement. Are we too in need of realising this truth once more?
Postman goes on to claim America as the first society to give free reign to technology dominance and intrusion on society - the first real 'Technopoly'. America was fertile ground for such a revolutionary change due to the natural distrust for constraints and the pervading frontier mentality when it came to business initiatives. This lack of concern for long term well-being allowed ample opportunity for 'radical technological intrusions' to work their way in to everyday society, the result being that people are generally heedless as to the origins and effects of the technologies that surround them. It is as though the sacred First Commandment has been appropriated to Science by which it is meant that there shall be no other god beside it.
The result of a Technopoly is the vast, gaping disconnect between our inherently human experience and the information digitised, numerated and presented to us via complex algorithms and ever increasing computers and machines. A vivid example provided is the now common reliance by medical professionals of their tools to the extent that they have almost entirely abandoned the subjective but real impact of an illness on the mental and psychological wellbeing of a patient. Quite often many of the doctors involved with a patient's treatment may never even have direct contact with them, instead working on their ailments remotely via the study of medical machinery output which has translated their human pain into a machine-readable value. As Postman eloquently writes, a Technopoly aspires to remove as much mystery and subjectivity as it can and replace it with discrete figures and indisputable facts. Perhaps some aspects of the human enterprise however, are not amenable to this attempt at standardisation.
To conclude, this book was fundamental in opening my eyes to the envelopment of technology in our culture, and to not blindly accept the narrative that it is inherently good. It is hard to believe that this book was written in 1992 as it seems to describe contemporary culture perfectly. One can only imagine the horror Neil Postman would have expressed if he saw how society had changed since then.
The book is filled with countless more examples which made me redefine what it means to have a technology benefit a culture, and to understand that it also comes at a cost.
Something is gained, but now I understand that something will also be lost. It is up to us to watch its introduction with open eyes and to decide if it is worth the cost.
If you have the slightest curiosity about technology and its impact on culture, this book is for you. It is an incredibly important topic that punches above its weight in moderating the overwhelming discourse on how beneficial technology is to us, and provides a fundamental redefinition on what it means to make social progress.
Highly recommended.
This narrative may seem unnecessarily confrontational and dramatic, but Postman makes a compelling argument. He details his points as to how technology is seen as a close friend, giving unconditionally its gifts to society and allowing us to avail of its use. He finds it important however to moderate the din of its enthusiasts by presenting his dissenting voice of opposition in which he details why he thinks that technology and its uncontrolled adoption and diffusion into society can contain many harmful effects. Technology is a friend he concedes, but it also has a dark side and its gifts come with costs.
A common underlying theme throughout the book was that although technology has changed over time - indeed very rapidly over the last 150 years - the human brain and our social, mental, spiritual and physical needs have remained the same. Technology has not been able to allow us to rise above our very human constraints - and nor should it - for it is but an advancement of our tools, not our type. With this understanding, we can see how technology may introduce new links into society which leave our human brains and their modes of functionality at a clear disadvantage.
Postman goes on to state that whenever we admit a new technology into our society, we should do so with cautious, weary eyes rather than the unfettered enthusiasm of a child excited about a new toy. Often a technology can introduce or even permanently alter our ways of establishing truth, knowledge and justice. Even with the introduction of the mathematical concept of zero, new ideas such as that of calculable debt were able to change how an economic and ownership system functioned.
New technology can also change what words mean. 'Evidence' may have historically been understood to mean witness testimony, but its definition has arguably been expanded to include technological evidence such as image captures or video footage. This has also changed what we mean when we say we 'know' what may have happened.
One very insightful example that has spared no-one in its effects was that given of the clock. According to Neil Postman, who himself references Lewis Mumford, clocks were initially used inside Monasteries where they helped to alert and inform the religious devotees as to the timings of their proscribed rituals. Once it was taken outside of the Monastery walls however, it permeated society and became a tool to synchonrise the actions of men and allowed the birth of modern Capitalism and the 9-5 as we know it. One could have hardly predicted its wide-ranging consequences when the technology was being introduced then, so will we take heed to this principle going forth? That is up to us.
Other examples include how to spread of the Printing Press eventually led to an attack of the millennia-old Oral Tradition, and how the invention of the Telescope played a pivotal part of the disintegration of Christianity in Europe via the claims of Earth not being the centre of the universe and humans being removed from their pedestal of sacred uniqueness and importance. The subsequent decline of tradition and religion in Europe and America led to belief in the idea of constant moral, economic and social progress, the same idea which fuels our blind trust in technology today by virtue of association. Postman goes on to argue that we have now come to the point where we have replaced our idea of human progress with that of technological progress, our conflating of the two has led to the latter's triumph.
Further commentary on the state of information overload the average person experiences on a daily basis allows Postman to raise further questions on how we have come to accept our current state. While some may adopt the idea that being advertised to is a normal fact of modern day life, I found it insightful and thought provoking to understand that the best sources of knowledge are often the most restrictive in what they are allow to teach and be taught. The example given of a University was something I found which described this best. As part of a university course, we are expected to limit our inputs to a limited number of verified and agreed upon sources. This limitation does not necessarily lower the quality of the knowledge gained, rather it is increased because of it. Here, quality is truly prioritised over quantity - so why do we accept anything less than this standard in day to day life?
We are continuously bombarded with information and see the addition of information from endless sources as a proof of our continuous advancement, but as shown - the best institutions for higher learning always limit their inputs. Should we not take our lesson from them? I also found it interesting when Neil Postman commented that Plato and Aristotle did not associate the need for efficiency and productivity with the refinement of a man's mind. For them, the ideas did not mix. Achieving high efficiency and productivity was the goal of laborious work destined for slaves, it was not necessarily something which aided in the cause of human moral and intellectual advancement. Are we too in need of realising this truth once more?
Postman goes on to claim America as the first society to give free reign to technology dominance and intrusion on society - the first real 'Technopoly'. America was fertile ground for such a revolutionary change due to the natural distrust for constraints and the pervading frontier mentality when it came to business initiatives. This lack of concern for long term well-being allowed ample opportunity for 'radical technological intrusions' to work their way in to everyday society, the result being that people are generally heedless as to the origins and effects of the technologies that surround them. It is as though the sacred First Commandment has been appropriated to Science by which it is meant that there shall be no other god beside it.
The result of a Technopoly is the vast, gaping disconnect between our inherently human experience and the information digitised, numerated and presented to us via complex algorithms and ever increasing computers and machines. A vivid example provided is the now common reliance by medical professionals of their tools to the extent that they have almost entirely abandoned the subjective but real impact of an illness on the mental and psychological wellbeing of a patient. Quite often many of the doctors involved with a patient's treatment may never even have direct contact with them, instead working on their ailments remotely via the study of medical machinery output which has translated their human pain into a machine-readable value. As Postman eloquently writes, a Technopoly aspires to remove as much mystery and subjectivity as it can and replace it with discrete figures and indisputable facts. Perhaps some aspects of the human enterprise however, are not amenable to this attempt at standardisation.
To conclude, this book was fundamental in opening my eyes to the envelopment of technology in our culture, and to not blindly accept the narrative that it is inherently good. It is hard to believe that this book was written in 1992 as it seems to describe contemporary culture perfectly. One can only imagine the horror Neil Postman would have expressed if he saw how society had changed since then.
The book is filled with countless more examples which made me redefine what it means to have a technology benefit a culture, and to understand that it also comes at a cost.
Something is gained, but now I understand that something will also be lost. It is up to us to watch its introduction with open eyes and to decide if it is worth the cost.
If you have the slightest curiosity about technology and its impact on culture, this book is for you. It is an incredibly important topic that punches above its weight in moderating the overwhelming discourse on how beneficial technology is to us, and provides a fundamental redefinition on what it means to make social progress.
Highly recommended.
September 3, 2026
I deeply agreed with the vast majority of his tech criticism, and was somewhat surprised at how well-read Postman was—a sense that I didn't get from Amusing Ourselves to Death. However, -1 star for more than one naïve understanding of Christianity, tradition, authority, and religion,
and especially
for his view of education in the last chapter. Such unabashed Hegelianism at the end took me by surprise. Nevertheless, this is a great introduction if someone wants to understand a line of thinking about technology that is hopefully becoming more prominent.
January 13, 2019
Despite being published in 1993 and therefore dealing with technology well before the internet revolution, many of the ideas are very relevant in our world today. Some really thought provoking points, like asking how important the invention of the printing press was to the coming of the Lutheran reformation. The central hypothesis that there are good and bad effects to every new technological advance needs to be put forward, but the book tends to repeat that point so many times and never really goes deeper than that.
Read
November 6, 2024DNF. I'm sure this is a great book. I love Neil Postman, but I had to set it aside for now. When I can think more clearly, I will pick it back up.
From intro - he talks about technology being a friend, but one with a dark side. "...the uncontrolled growth of technology destroys the vital sources of our humanity. It creates a culture without a moral foundation. It undermines certain mental processes and social relations that make human life worth living."
From intro - he talks about technology being a friend, but one with a dark side. "...the uncontrolled growth of technology destroys the vital sources of our humanity. It creates a culture without a moral foundation. It undermines certain mental processes and social relations that make human life worth living."
September 5, 2025
You may or may not be convinced of Postman's every argument, but you still need to listen to what he has to say.
June 16, 2022
don’t really like writing reviews since most of the people i know use them as currency but am deeply moved by this work and would implore people to read it.
cultural analysis, some strange living data with a contentious existence. Pretty quick and easy read with very little fat in it as a nonfictionwork
If you happened to be someone with some certain ‘ framework’ (sordid term+concept) that dismisses the claims Postman makes about the ethical ramifications of technological advancement this book will not do you much good. I am sure the author himself would be able to more than sympathize With these people due to his clearly prescient understanding of the absolutely treacherous encroach of subjectivity that (logically) follows oversaturation of information \ media. other reviewers are not incorrect in observing that most of the listicle observations made by Postman are cheap and (likely deliberately) schematic.
plainly, the book itself is good and conceptually smooth but the afterimage left in the readers mind is agonizingly upsetting. The cascading-cerebral-bituminous-smoothie of concurrence being a background to this work is fascinating and evokes an experience like nothing like, like reading Revelations whileseventrumpets sound faintly
cultural analysis, some strange living data with a contentious existence. Pretty quick and easy read with very little fat in it as a nonfictionwork
If you happened to be someone with some certain ‘ framework’ (sordid term+concept) that dismisses the claims Postman makes about the ethical ramifications of technological advancement this book will not do you much good. I am sure the author himself would be able to more than sympathize With these people due to his clearly prescient understanding of the absolutely treacherous encroach of subjectivity that (logically) follows oversaturation of information \ media. other reviewers are not incorrect in observing that most of the listicle observations made by Postman are cheap and (likely deliberately) schematic.
plainly, the book itself is good and conceptually smooth but the afterimage left in the readers mind is agonizingly upsetting. The cascading-cerebral-bituminous-smoothie of concurrence being a background to this work is fascinating and evokes an experience like nothing like, like reading Revelations whileseventrumpets sound faintly
April 4, 2016
"Amusing Ourselves to Death" by Neil Postman is one of my favorite books, and Technopoly offers some of the same kind of effective cultural criticism that made that one such a classic. To be honest many of the ideas he espoused here felt somewhat familiar to me. In fairness, this book was written decades ago and so his ideas have had a long time to filter out. I wonder what he would make of the Technopoly given that this book was written even before the Internet was invented. He correctly notes that an absence of other solid cultural values (degraded as they have been by other philosophical and scientific developments) has left many of us completely unable to contextualize technology into our own lives. Instead, technology ends up dictating the terms and uses us for its own purposes. Unlike tools which we developed for a purpose, our development of technology goes on autopilot and we resign ourselves to going wherever we may with it.
All in all this is a solid and necessary need to understand the age we live in. My own somewhat tepid review reflects the familiarity of many of his arguments to me.
All in all this is a solid and necessary need to understand the age we live in. My own somewhat tepid review reflects the familiarity of many of his arguments to me.
July 19, 2007
This book is about how technology affects our society and culture. Specifically, this book is about how Technology negatively affects our society and culture. Postman is very one sided and hardly even pays lip service to any contradictory interpretations than his own.
I read this book very quickly, in one sitting, finishing the book in an afternoon. I don't remember his whole argument. However, when I finished I remember being dissatisfied with Postman's arguments, thinking he was an idiot, thinking the book was well written, and being damn proud of myself for reading the book in one sitting.
Neil Postman gets two stars for good writing, he would have had more, except that I disagree with his thesis and he does not argue it particularly well.
I read this book very quickly, in one sitting, finishing the book in an afternoon. I don't remember his whole argument. However, when I finished I remember being dissatisfied with Postman's arguments, thinking he was an idiot, thinking the book was well written, and being damn proud of myself for reading the book in one sitting.
Neil Postman gets two stars for good writing, he would have had more, except that I disagree with his thesis and he does not argue it particularly well.
September 17, 2018
Anti-science, pro-theocracy, a shallow critique of modernity that offers no substantive intellectual tools for understanding technology or society. There are better and deeper analysis available elsewhere.
July 29, 2019
کتاب اگر خوب باشد حتی اگر در مورد موضوعات روز باشد، بعد از ۲۶ سال هم از تازگی نمیافتد.
September 7, 2023
He never even lived long enough to see instagram reels of course he’s hating 🤦♂️
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October 30, 2022I couldn't bring myself to give this book a rating, which would have pleased Postman, because it is strangely uneven. It has chapters in which Postman is making several terrible arguments and strawmanning whole disciplines. Those chapters, even though they also say great things, deserve a very low rating. But then other chapters are astonishingly insightful and well-thought out, to the point of being some of the best social criticism I've read! I'll just leave this email I sent to my brother about it as my review:
"Finished Postman. What a whirlwind of a social criticism book! I found myself deeply annoyed with him in certain parts and then blown away by other parts. As with the way he wrote about medicine, I actually found his way of writing about scientism ironically too reductionist and badly argued. His complete dismissal of all social science seems to me essentially groundless - or if it has a ground, that ground is the mistaken belief that humans are not part of "nature" and do not have a studiable nature, even if it is not exact in its knowability. I think he misrepresented the arguments of social science greatly and, even though he also covered all the thoughtful and well-put criticisms of scientism as well - namely that it tries to provide a moral system and grand narrative while claiming to not be religious or transcendent - this strawmanning of entire disciplinary fields left a bad taste in my mouth and I think was just not a strong element for Postman. It again isn't that his main principles are wrong. It is that he attributes the wrong particulars as evidence for his main principles, sometimes in ways that strain credulity.
But then, after being frustrated (and also delighted, as I am always happy to find frustrating elements in books like this because it engages me all the more) I was jawdropped by the chapter, "The Great Symbol Drain." As a chapter, it was one of the greatest and most insightful pieces of social thought I've ever read. Neil was on another plane! Then my estimation of him went up further again with his final chapter on education. I was genuinely moved by his defense of the old things and his declaration that they must be taught above all else. I found myself almost in complete agreement with that whole section as well. It also made me sad to see him warn that schools cannot be centered on emotional well-being, or else, over time, students will become their own self-reference and their own whole education. Had a sinking, 'we are so fucked' feeling when reading that. Maybe Postman and myself are just too much of dreamers though. A lot to digest still and think about. Particularly loved the section on knowing the history of every subject, because the history shows students how we got there and imbues it with meaning that stretches over centuries and millennia. Thoughts?"
"Finished Postman. What a whirlwind of a social criticism book! I found myself deeply annoyed with him in certain parts and then blown away by other parts. As with the way he wrote about medicine, I actually found his way of writing about scientism ironically too reductionist and badly argued. His complete dismissal of all social science seems to me essentially groundless - or if it has a ground, that ground is the mistaken belief that humans are not part of "nature" and do not have a studiable nature, even if it is not exact in its knowability. I think he misrepresented the arguments of social science greatly and, even though he also covered all the thoughtful and well-put criticisms of scientism as well - namely that it tries to provide a moral system and grand narrative while claiming to not be religious or transcendent - this strawmanning of entire disciplinary fields left a bad taste in my mouth and I think was just not a strong element for Postman. It again isn't that his main principles are wrong. It is that he attributes the wrong particulars as evidence for his main principles, sometimes in ways that strain credulity.
But then, after being frustrated (and also delighted, as I am always happy to find frustrating elements in books like this because it engages me all the more) I was jawdropped by the chapter, "The Great Symbol Drain." As a chapter, it was one of the greatest and most insightful pieces of social thought I've ever read. Neil was on another plane! Then my estimation of him went up further again with his final chapter on education. I was genuinely moved by his defense of the old things and his declaration that they must be taught above all else. I found myself almost in complete agreement with that whole section as well. It also made me sad to see him warn that schools cannot be centered on emotional well-being, or else, over time, students will become their own self-reference and their own whole education. Had a sinking, 'we are so fucked' feeling when reading that. Maybe Postman and myself are just too much of dreamers though. A lot to digest still and think about. Particularly loved the section on knowing the history of every subject, because the history shows students how we got there and imbues it with meaning that stretches over centuries and millennia. Thoughts?"
June 29, 2021
4.5 stars. Very good observations on the dark side of technological infatuation. It holds up without being really dated almost 30 years later, which is an indication of how impressive Postman's insight is. The main point which has changed is the idea that at the time of writing, you needed to have statistical facts to get companies and governments to do something and he points out the ineffectiveness of other kinds of information; now, it is possible to use some narratives without statistical support. I don't think his solutions are adequate, however.
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