Book Review: Technopoly

The book that I chose to read and review is "Technopoly: The Surrender of culture to Technology" by Neil Postman. This book was written in 1992 and examines the cultural transformation of a technology dependant society. Technopoly is a non-fiction work that takes a look at the negative aspects of having a society that not only uses technology, but as Postman discusses, is controlled by it. Postman refers to technology as a "dangerous enemy" that has changed our values, culture, religion, and way of life.

The author begins his book by discussing that technology has both positive and negative effects on society. Postman states that the creators of technology see "only what new technologies can do and are incapable of imagining what they can undo". Postman believes that technology creates an immoral society, but does not back up his opinions. It is easy to see that Postman does not trust technology and sees it for the harm that it can create instead of the good. Postman goes on to discuss how technolgy, especially computers, has completely changed the way that we educate our youth. According to the author, children do not face-to-face group collaboration when technology is used to teach. Postman argues that the schools need to be the leaders in ending the "Technopoly" by teaching without the use of computers and other technology.

Postman believes that people will rely on technology to perform everything in the daily lives. He even takes a stab at the use of technology in medicine. He does not like the fact that doctors rely on technology for medical diagnoses. He fails to mention the positive effect, and there are many, that have come about because of technology.

I found that this book was difficult to read because I did not agree with what the author was saying. I think that technology has its positive and negative sides, but Postman only seemed to focus on the negative aspects. I think that there is so much more that could be done with the implementation of technology. Ending the use of technology because there are dangers just seems silly. There are dangers in everything and the key to being safe on the computer is to take some simple precaution's. I found this author's views to be a bit extreme and ridiculous. He was not able to back up most of his opinions which made it hard for me to take this book seriously.