Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology

Chapter 4 describes the set of conditions in America that allowed Technopoly to flourish once it was established. Postman states that traditional, tool-using cultures had a coherent, comprehensive worldview in which everything could be explained. He compares this to a new deck of cards that come in a given order; once you begin to examine each card, you notice the pattern and can accurately guess what the next card will be. On the other hand, a Technopoly is like a deck of cards that has been shuffled many times; each card dealt is random.

Information has the same effect, the author argues. Technocracies replaced traditional cultures by also offering a coherent narrative based on science. For a time, this worked, but soon a glut of information caused the system to backfire; conflicting scientific findings caused information chaos. He shows how this happened after the introduction of the printing press in the 15th century. As the quantity of information grew, so did the need for methods of control. One such method was vastly increasing the number of schools. Likewise, the curriculum was devised in order to limit and organize information. The printing press played a strong role in the Scientific Revolution, Protestantism, and the founding of the United States.