Technopoly

This book was great and I've shared similar thoughts with the ideas Neil Postman presents on the effects of technology on the United States population as discussed in his book, Technopoly The Surrender of Culture to Technology. I feel that people have access to great inventions like computer and smartphones, but the uses they serve could lower human logic and thought.

Earlier in the book (on p. 64), Postman gives one definition of a Technopoly as having an "information immune system" that "is inoperable. "There's less thought used to solve real life problems with new gizmos and gadgets that do all the work for us. The only thing that seems to be required of us is to give the devices our full attention. A small example of technology taking over our minds is when people start using their phones for other reasons besides actually talking to someone. Regardless of what they are doing, some form of technology is taking away their attention so that if they were driving while doing this(..and let's be honesty, there are a lot of people like me guilty of this) making them hazards and dangerous to themselves and everyone else on the road.

 I loved the way Postman opened up the chapter 10 with a hypothetical California chardonnay TV commercial starring Jesus (p. 164). He goes to the extreme to say society is on a course to downgrading so much that biblical figures will run Madison Ave and try to sell us things some rappers talk about. Moore's law was discussed in the first book, Computers by Swedin and Ferro, and directly relates to the discussion of technology. The exponential increase in technological advancement has to be lowering something on another graph important to human health, whether it be mental or physical.

To say technology is pure evil is going to an extreme since it has a great influence on medicine and ways to live healthier. Of course when the boundaries to search/upload/download content of almost ANYTHING is endless. It's a little scary thinking about what someone could be using technology.