America has not completely forfeited it’s humanity to technology yet, but in the race to get there America is definitely in the lead and running strong. After reading the second half of Neil Postman’s Technopoly, that is one of the main messages that comes to mind. In the second half of this depiction of humanities disintegration into the ocean of technology, Neil Postman discusses the different forms of technological cultures and further develops his arguments about why and how we are losing control of our culture. According to Neil Postman, technology-using cultures can be split up into three groups: tool-using cultures, technocracies, and technopolies. These three groups cover a spectrum that ranges from people who have complete control over their technology and have clear and distinct purposes for it, to technology that has spread like wild fire and has no clear purpose or intent other than the murky idea that more information is always better. Furthermore, he discusses how technology and more specifically technopoly have been able to spread unbeknownst to most people, such as through the medical trade, computers, and even statistics (what Neil Postman calls an “invisible technology”). Through the second half of this book, two very important arguments that I felt Neil Postman made were that technopoly succeeds only through people ignorantly allowing it to become the “master” and also it seems as though America is in the greatest need of salvation from this technological overrun.
Although it is most likely not intended, people’s over confidence and faith in technology is beginning to blur the lines between “tool user” and “tool”. This argument by Neil Postman, which I wholly agree with, basically says that people are just putting too much faith in their technology. That is the second time I used the word “faith” and I meant to do so, because regardless of whether people realize it or not, this technology is actually become the source of a people’s belief systems. In Technopoly, at one point Neil Postman even states “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 calculations.” (pg. 118) Even he uses the word “faith”, because when people begin to put so much devotion and loyalty into something it becomes an ideology, and according to Neil Postman, one of the very important things that a technology needs in order to survive is ideology based around technology. What is happening as a result of this is that creative and original thought are being diminished. Any time someone has a problem or is curious about something they just go straight to the computer to find an answer; people are thinking less and less for themselves and instead allowing their technology to think for them. If changes are not made, computers will become the users of people.
As a result of America’s willingness to unconditionally adopt any and all technology into its life, it seems that America is now ahead of all other countries in terms of technological sovereignty. Although there are other technologically advanced placed around the world, they would still be considered by Neil Postman to be “technocracies.” Those places, such as Japan, Europe, and England all have similar levels of technology relative to America, but the difference is how the people there have adopted it. America is the only place that has actually began to adopt technology as an ideology. Neil Postman even says that one of the “pillars” of technopoly is the “idea that faith in science can serve as a comprehensive belief system that gives meaning to life, as well as a sense of well-being, morality, and even immortality.”(pg. 147) Who knows what the future will hold, but at this point in time, the only culture that has began adopting this idea is American culture. For this reason, American culture is the only technopoly and is the closest to surrendering its culture to technology (as the title states) completely. There is clear support for this argument in Computers: The Life Story of a Technology, by Swedin and Ferro. When electronic computers were first being created, any person who wanted to take advantage of their capabilities in any way needed to have a strong understanding of the inner working and limitations of them. This created a very clear line between man and machine. At the end of the book though, Swedin and Ferro describe the current state of computers, and computers are now so easy to use and so accessible that people rely and depend on them without really knowing anything about them. If a belief system can be defined as something a person puts their faith, reliance, dedication, and secrets into without truly understanding, then computers and technology in general has definitely become a belief system in American culture.
P.S. I have found that I rarely use algorithms in my internet use. Actually, I seem to go to efforts I did not even realize in order to prevent algorithms from being used. Fairly often I will delete my cookies, cache, and other internet preference files in order to prevent websites from keeping track of me and using my information in algorithms.
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