• Technopoly

  • The Surrender of Culture to Technology
  • By: Neil Postman
  • Narrated by: Jeff Riggenbach
  • Length: 5 hrs and 39 mins
  • 4.6 out of 5 stars (668 ratings)

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Technopoly  By  cover art

Technopoly

By: Neil Postman
Narrated by: Jeff Riggenbach
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Publisher's summary

In this witty, often terrifying work of cultural criticism, Postman chronicles our transformation into a Technopoly: 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.

©1992 Neil Postman (P)2000 Blackstone Audio, Inc.

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Error in recording

With 10:48 left in chapter 4, there is a jump that is clearly an error. Two unrelated thoughts get connected across the break. This needs a fix.

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15 people found this helpful

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Great read (listen)

Reading this book was insightful... Considering the book was published in 1992 the contents are relevant in 2015.

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9 people found this helpful

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As a technologist, this book is a lighthouse.

Today, so much is without any meaning except more, more, more. Why we create technology is completely left out, along with its place in life. Craving real culture, we destroy more of it every day. This book crushes the premise of technology as an end in itself, and especially charges structures which undermine humanity. The solution at the end is appropriate and exciting. And the book itself is prescient in measurable ways. I'm grateful beyond words for this work. And now, we regroup around actual value, not efficiency alone.

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7 people found this helpful

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A long, winding road

Postman has great concepts and ideas but lacks fully connecting it back to examples of electric technology throughout the book. He goes so in-depth on the histories of non-electrical technologies, that it drowns out his main points. Only until the end of the last chapter do we find out that his main goal is for people to learn about the histories of each subject in depth. A few pages at the beginning of the book that mention technology "in-depth" does not balance the vagueness of the concept throughout the rest of the novel. It was like pulling teeth to get through some of these chapters. Chapters 6 & 7 were fantastic, though.

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A must read for humanizing science and education

An excellent and very timely book 📚 that raises questions about “why”, not just “what” and “how” we do, especially in the areas of science, technology and education.

Nowadays we accept the mechanistic, pragmatic technopoly and technocracy as a given. There are enormous challenges and risks in this way of non-thinking and blind obedience.

This book reminds us of our humanity and suggests ways to learn and be a discerning, critical thinker.

I will definitely use quotes from the book 📖 in my future presentations about Science vs Scientism and propaganda.

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Indispensable

This is indispensable to philosophy of science and/or technology. Postman is more relevant now than ever.

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Tremendous..

If you are inclined to suspect a book about technology written in a 1990s is no longer relevant... Nothing could be further from the truth. Deeply profound and wise, but still easily accessible.

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Still as relevant and illuminating as it was 30 years ago

Technopoly is a philosophical examination of the ways in which technologies impact and influence our world, beyond simply their use and implementation. Postman is not a Luddite, a staunchly anti-technology critic hoping to return to the pre-technological past. Rather, he asks us to think critically and carefully about the ways in which our technologies affect us in ways that we may not have considered, including creating and reinforcing ideologies, changing the goals of our political process, even disturbing and confusing our concept of truth in favor of precision and efficiency.

This is serious philosophy of technology, but is accessible in its style and not overly referential.

Published in 1992 (before the widespread public use of the internet), some references are dated. The ideas, however, are just as relevant today as they were then.

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Great Insights on Scientism and Digital State

Liberty vs Efficiency.

Neil Postman has sadly passed. Twenty years ago. But this book feels like it was written last week. The best chapter is #9. How even fake science (the "Social Science") pretends to be "science". Sigmund Freud gives his book to a famous actual scientist (a physicist) and asks for an opinion. The physicist destroys Freud with his response, "I don't anything about Non-Scientific writing."

Also, important is how the obsession of measures, that is applicable to business and industrial processes, is being taken to areas that do not apply. Creating a measure for something we cannot even define. Important thoughts on IQ testing.

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Amazing book

Everyone should read this prescient book that anticipates the contemporary media landscape and exposes the core assumptions that tacitly govern our world

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