Human and Technology

March 2013 Technopoly Neil Postmans 1992 book, entitled Technopoly The Surrender of husbandry to Technology, is one that explores the fear of the growing realization that we devote become a community henpecked by engineering science. Although many people in to twenty-four hour periods day and age would say that technology and the large array of technological advances of the sometime(prenominal) decade or so, be both a jock and an enemy, in that they have both benefits and downfalls, Postmans book arrives at the government issue with a pessimistic view of what the dangers of technology is doing to our culture.Postman opens up his book with a story of the fictional character named Thamus. Retelling the story of Thamus is key in that it opens the introduction to the notion that we should fear large shifts in where we purpose our trust of voice communication and its understanding. The story of Thamus describes the reluctance to evolve out of oral custom into writing essay wri ter prank. The point Thamus makes is that writing will lastly hinder people because it will no longer require them to good causa their memory, thus theyd become very forgetful with the things they learn.Technopoly does a gigantic job of putting the reader in the position to stop mentation somewhat all the great things that technology and its advances will do for us, and encourages us to take a look into what these technologies will undo for us as a nation. Telegraphy is a topic that is discussed in the book. Neil Postmans believes that the telegraph changed communication forever. Prior to Samuel Morses 1843 invention, data could tho travel from one place to another as fast as a train could travel. Which around the time of the invention of the telegraph was about 35 mph.This invention thus removed space as an inescapable constraint on the movement of information. Telegraphy also changed the communication from a process of understanding into solving a particular problem. Rathe r than see communication as a learning process needed to separate understanding, this quick and easily accessible information became context-free information, thus in a way making information a commodity. Telegraphy indefinitely drastically changed the history of communication by essentially instigating the next stage of the information revolution. In Postmans book, Technopoly is this culture that has deified technology.Although telegraphy is believed to have been what started it, Postman looks at todays culture and what it has become as a result of our infatuation with technology. It has progressed to the point that we have basically authentic something that can think better than we can, and are now finding that individuals and society as a whole is indeed seeking out and finding purpose and direction from technology. We, as a nation, used to be controlled by religious and social traditions, still now the sad reality is that pitying life has been reduced to finding meaning in machines.So in attempting to dissolver the question of whether or not we are a society dominated by technology, Technopoly makes a pretty convincing argument that we in particular are. Looking at how technology has changed how we operate in areas like science, medicine, language, and education, is where we will be able to see the significant shift that has taken place in the past few decades. In regards to the medical industry, one example of the effects of technology has been the shift in trust from man to machine.Doctors truly trust blindly what machines and tests have to say about the well macrocosm of a patient. Granted there are hundreds of pros that come with these medical advances, but the cons are in fact doctors losing their bedside manner, or their weighing of the patients verbal complaints. another(prenominal) negative effect technology has had on the medical industry is that de human beingsization of the patients have become more and more prevalent. Problems are ex istence fixed, quite an than patients being cured. In regards to language and science, technology has also had society change effects.Our language and how we communicate has become digitalized. No long are communities approach together for block parties, but rather they are all friend requesting their neighborhoods Facebook Page. With science, or the industry side of our nation, humans are being replaced with more efficient machines. They cost less to operate and abide by and can be perhaps 1,000 times as productive in a 24 hour period than a human being could be. One last area, in which Technopoly discusses the negative effects that technology is trustworthy for, is the area of education in our nation.The book states that, knowledge is not a fixed thing but a stage in human development, with a past and future. (Postman 190) This idea then infers the question of, what should technologys role be in education? Education how it was intended to be instills not only knowledge but a lso a intellect of meaning and purpose in a child. Postmans book then argues that computers, a key symbol in Technopoly, undermine this experient idea of school. They do so by eliminating a dependency on an educational environment that values group learning, cooperation, and social responsibility.In conclusion, it would be scatterbrained of us to denounce the reality that technology and its advances have brought a manhood of good into our way of life. Having been alert of this though, we need to also become aware of the fact that as much of a friend as technology has been and always will be to us, it can also be our beat out enemy that very well might lead us into a future filled with ignorance. Works Cited Postman, Neil. Technopoly The Surrender Of Culture To Technology. New York Vintage, 1993. Print.