Technopoly

The way I see it, technopoly relates to Brave New World in a huge way. When reading the chapter from Neil Postman’s Technopoly I realized that it is very similar to Singularity. Singularity was the idea that one day we will become powerless to technology and technopoly gave us a reason as to why it could happen. Technopoly says that the reason for us being set back is because we have opinions and emotions which causes us to question things instead of just doing it. Technocracy was defined as a “society only loosely controlled by social custom and religious tradition and driven by impulse to invent” (Postman 41). Postman defines the concept of technopoly as being a “totalitarian technocracy” (Postman 48). This concept can also be used to define the new world state in Brave New World because everything is based on technology starting from the way they are created, to the way they think and what they do. Frederick Winslow Taylor fits into the discussion because he wrote a book called The Principles of Scientific Management that “contains the first explicit and formal outline of the assumptions of the thought-world of Technopoly” (Postman 51). He basically said that we are inferior to technology. Postman and Kurzweil both have the same idea that humans are one day going to merge with technology and they explain that through the theories of technopoly and singularity. However, they have different opinions about it. Postman sort of warns us about it while Kurzweil can’t wait for the day to come. Overall, reading this article allowed me to better understand Brave New World because it had many explanations for the concept of singularity. It allowed me to see that tradition was definitely forgotten and replaced and it was pretty obvious that the concept of technopoly has already begun in the novel.