Technopoly Blog

Zachary Nevills

P.6

Technopoly Blog

            As Neil Postman writes the Technopoly he discusses many interesting thoughts and ultimately describes the differences between what he calls a technocracy and the ever imminent TECHNOPOLY.  While reading the chapter, Postman’s so-called technopoly is described as a “totalitarian technocracy.” So what exactly is a technocracy? It can be defined as, “a society only loosely controlled by social custom and religious tradition and driven by impulse to invent- an ‘unseen hand’ will eliminate the incompetent and reward those who produce cheaply and well the goods that people want.”  By using these ideals as lenses to examine Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, many comparisons can be made to further understand the book.  

            Although the book may have not exactly tell us how the technopoly came about in that society, conclusions can be drawn.  We can read from the novel and easily state that a world such as the one we currently live in is a “thought world”, and that major changes in Brave New World occurred for it to become so technologically advanced.  In order for that to happen certain ideas had to have taken place.  This would be called the transition into Postman’s technopoly.  To see such a thing a technopoly taking over a world would be inconceivable and therefore blind people to an obvious change.  You see a technopoly is not a clear cut step from a technocracy and that is the precise reason why Aldous Huxley’s world in his novel is so confused.  The technopoly they live in did not just take over, it was a gradual process and if Postman correctly describes it then stopping it was impossible.  The people in Brave New World are living the product of a world that witnessed a sort of ghostly invasion of ideas.  A technopoly does make thoughts “illegal”, “immoral”, or even “unpopular”, but what it does do is make them “invisible and therefore irrelevant.”  This is how comparisons are drawn between what Postman predicts and what Huxley has already written.  The Brave New World is as immersed in a technopoly as can be and makes no effort to appear anything different.