Technopoly

                As a society, people crave new and upcoming inventions made by others. Postman’s article on Technopolies confronts this issue and how we came about using it within our society. This includes societies various stages of development, including the “old ways”, technocracy, and than finally a technocracy.

                To understand what a technopoly is, technocracy must be explained. The arcticle states that,” In a technocracy…. a society only loosely controlled by social custom and religious tradition and driven by the impulse to invent” (Postman). This means that a technocracy isn’t controlled by any specific religion or customs, but it does wish to better itself  through the invention of technology. This way of life, however, still must compete with societies who still value the old traditions and customs. In a technopoly, this struggle no longer exists and in its place stands a totalitarian society, in which all aspects of people’s lives are controlled. A technopoly thus is a totalitarian technocracy where humans help machines progress instead of the other way around.

                This relates to Brave New World because a technopoly is used within most of the novels settings. Everyone follows Ford ( their uniform “God”) and everyone takes Soma (their religion). Every aspect of one’s life has been planned from birth to death and all their customs are being controlled. The ways and traditions of the “Old World” are still present within reservations, but are looked down upon and are “invisible” to the rest of society. Those reservations don’t follow a technopoly or even a technocracy, only the old traditional ways people barely survived from. As a technopoly may seem like the perfect utopia for a society, a technocracy is better suit.