TECHnopoly

           Singularity and technopoly, I believe, are two words that express close to the same idea. Singularity is the idea that people and technology will combine together as one, and technopoly is the idea of surrendering our culture to technology. In this chapter, Postman describes a technopoly as “workers were relieved of any responsibility to think at all. The system would do their thinking for them.”  I believe that Bernard and Lenia live in a technopoly in the Brave New World. They have no sense of opinion and they use technology to create a “perfect” society.  A technocracy is defined as a form of government controlled by technocrats.  Postman describes a technocracy as “a society only loosely controlled by social custom and religious tradition and driven y the impulse to invent the “unseen hand.” Now does this relate to Brave New World? In the Brave new World, there are no customs or religions at all. They could be considered robots, specifically designed to do what they are made to do. But they are driven by the ‘unseen hand.’ Everyday they advance in technology always pursuing on making their world function better and better. Efficiency is the key.

            Fredrick Wilsow Taylor is known as the man who developed the use of scientific management. His philosophy is described in this quote, “The goal of human labor and thought is efficiency; that technical calculation is in all respects superior to human judgment; that in fact human judgment cannot be trusted, because it is plagued by laxity, ambiguity, and unnecessary complexity; that subjectivity is an obstacle to clear thinking; that what cannot be measured either does not exist or is of no value; and that the affairs of citizens are best guided and conducted by experts.” Taylor believes that computers are more efficient because they have no emotion. This can be related to the idea in Brave New World. For example, the people are controlled by their happiness. They are conditioned to think the same, and to be happy about it(mostly). This allows for faster and faster progress. This sense of thought makes me think about how much faster our society could advance if everyone agreed on things. Would it be easier if we had no emotions? It is scary to think about this happening to our world…the idea of no more humanity. If computers keep advancing and can think more efficiently than we can, it’s only a matter of time before technology is using us instead of us using technology.