Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology PART II

The last half of Postman's book was certainly an entertaining read. I'm not so sure how well of an argument Postman made in regards to the final point he made in the first half of the book. In the latter half, he focuses on specific examples of how technology relates to society and the faults of that integration.

I can't say that I agree or disagree completely with Postman. I caught myself doubting him as well as myself a couple of times during the reading. For example, technology became an instrument between the doctors and patients (pg. 99). That is a fact, and we all know it. Postman argues in his book that doctors become less competent as technology advances because they learn to rely less on themselves and much more on the machines they use. At first, I thought, "Oh my god, this is so true! Doctors have to learn how to use machines nowadays before they learn proper techniques, right?" Then, I took a step back and thought about it again. There is now way doctors are less competent. If anything, they have to be better than ever before! Doctors are NOT used by technologies. They take the time to train with machines to be able to correctly use and manipulate them to do their work. There are more requirements than ever before as well as competition to become a doctor. Postman is ignoring huge factors when he makes his so-called judgement calls and only focusing on the mere implications technology MAY have on people.

One thing that I really thought hard about was when Postman mentioned that "people believe that technological innovation is synonymous with human progress" (pg. 117). I mean, I do think that it's true, but can it be any other way? Advancements in technology enabled us to advance as humans with (for the most part) healthier, longer, and overall better lives. Postman argues that technological problems deal with inadequate information while real problems deal with moral issues, which is why technological innovation cannot be synonymous with human progress (119). Yet, is that really a factor in this? So what if the problems are different? We are not saying that technology fixes all these problems in society, but rather, they can just help us advance in certain ways. Unless Postman is saying that human advancement is possible if and only if societal problems are eliminated, this is irrelevant.

Above all, though, Postman's proposal caught my interest and had the wheels spinning inside my head. He make a good point that one cannot learn without the history, but he admits that this type of teaching will lead to set backs in the technological world. I wonder, if we had listened to him in 1992, would we be where we are today? Even better, what does Postman think about the technology-infested world we live in today? That would certainly be an interesting topic to talk about.

P.S. Algorithms that we talked about in class on Monday? As I said, the Amazon.com incident made me think of how useful yet creepy it is that I was able to find all my book by finding one course book and being recommended all others. Nowadays, I try not to pay attention to the ads on my facebook because I KNOW they are pertaining to something I was already tempted to buy/join/read/etc.!