From Technocracy to Technopoly

" 'Technology discloses man's mode of dealing with nature' and creates the condition of intercourse' by which we related to each other'."

Postman, p. 14.

The tectonic and the socio-technical are intimately related. 

Analogy

language is the driver of thought

Technological change is neither . . . .

"It is ecological. I mean 'ecological' in the same sense as the word is used by environmental scientists. One significant change generates total change."

Question of questions.

What is a command?

What is the driver of behavioral changes due to socio-technical advances?

Now

"The thrust of a century of scholarship had the effect of making us lose confidence in our belief systems and therefore ourselves . . . . the success of technology and the devaluation of traditional beliefs took on the exaggerated significance that pushed technocracy in America over into Technopoly." 

Postman, p. 55.

technocracy    a rule of technicians, techniques & technical specifications - or protocols

Technopoly     the surrender of culture to such ideals based on technical specifications - or protocols

Postman 40-70

Then

“In a technocracy, tools play a central role in the thought –world of a culture.”

Postman 27-28. 

Pursell, Madness of Taylorism & Fordism based on behavioral & commercial "shaping"

http://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/pds/gilded/progress/text3/taylor.pdf

Next

Chapter 5 is

Pursell's chapter that has an argument where he defines the altered relation of technology to science in the 16th through the 20th centuries?

Postman concludes:

"The thrust of a century of scholarship had the effect of making us lose confidence in our belief systems and therefore ourselves . . . .

Postman's evidence

the success of technology and the devaluation of traditional beliefs

took on the exaggerated significance that machinery demanded of workers and extended that to a wider society that was no longer:

agrarian & agricultural

but were becoming

machine dominated and mechanical

  The "Moses:" of this new "exodus" from the farms was Frederick Winslow Taylor

pushed technocracy in America over into Technopoly." 

  From:                                    To:

            rule of the machine                        the domination of only mechanical values      

Changes in Lexington Kentucky's main street due to machinery

Accommodating the machine; as a second nature, accustoming behavior to automated demands.

techniques & technical specifications become valued in the absence of competing ethical limitations these valued traits, procedures and protocols start out to widely influence social behavior and may evolve in time; emerging to alter once admired – but no-longer necessary – cultural values.

What are machine values?