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?

line

 

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

β€œIn 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

line 

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." 

redshift

  From:                                    To:

            rule of the machine                        the domination of only mechanical values      

 

Assemblymass

Changes in Lexington Kentucky's main street due to machinery

exington Kentucky before cars

Main Street with carsEastmain 1948MAin street with tall buildings

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?

links