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A review by pcdbigfoot
Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology by Neil Postman
3.5
"We have devalued the singular human capacity to see things whole in all their psychic, emotional and moral dimensions, and we have replaced this with faith in the powers of technical calculation."
Worthwhile read. The philosophical argument that technology is basically a newly fashionable theology is both provocative and timely. Book predates social media's impact on all of us, but still holds true. Postman's description of the impact as ecological is spot-on, in that we can't easily compare new waves of technological impact as with/without something. Rather the impact is broad, and seems to touch so much. 25 years after early broadband, we can see that it's not about just having 500 channels of on-demand television, but that the way we consume media and the means of basic commerce has changed. This book offers pretty apt observations of change, citing history of medicine and publishing as precedents. Taken with Cal Newport's "Digital Minimalism", and Nicholas Carr's "The Shallows" potent food for thought.
Worthwhile read. The philosophical argument that technology is basically a newly fashionable theology is both provocative and timely. Book predates social media's impact on all of us, but still holds true. Postman's description of the impact as ecological is spot-on, in that we can't easily compare new waves of technological impact as with/without something. Rather the impact is broad, and seems to touch so much. 25 years after early broadband, we can see that it's not about just having 500 channels of on-demand television, but that the way we consume media and the means of basic commerce has changed. This book offers pretty apt observations of change, citing history of medicine and publishing as precedents. Taken with Cal Newport's "Digital Minimalism", and Nicholas Carr's "The Shallows" potent food for thought.