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Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology is a book by Neil Postman published in 1992 that describes the development and characteristics of a "technopoly". He defines a technopoly as a society in which technology is deified, meaning “the culture seeks its authorisation in technology, finds its satisfactions in technology, and takes its orders from technology”.
Neil Postman (March 8, 1931 – October 5, 2003) was an American author, educator, media theorist and cultural critic, who eschewed digital technology, including personal computers, mobile devices, and cruise control in cars, and was critical of uses of technology, such as personal computers in school. [1]
As such, Winner neither succumbs to technological determinism nor social determinism. The source of a technology's politics is determined only by carefully examining its features and history. Although "The deterministic model of technology is widely propagated in society" (Sarah Miller), it has also been widely questioned by scholars.
Normative: an autonomous approach where technology is an important influence on history only where societies attached cultural and political meaning to it (e.g., the industrialization of society) Nomological: a naturalistic approach wherein an inevitable technological order arises based on laws of nature (e.g., steam mill had to follow the hand ...
Media ecology theory is the study of media, technology, and communication and how they affect human environments. [1] The theoretical concepts were proposed by Marshall McLuhan in 1964, [ 2 ] while the term media ecology was first formally introduced by Neil Postman in 1968.
Law of increasing the degree of ideality of the system The ideality of a system is a qualitative ratio between all desirable benefits of the system and its cost or other harmful effects. When trying to decide how to improve a given invention, one naturally would attempt to increase ideality, either to increase beneficial features or else to ...
Technological substitution: An incumbent technology is replaced by a radical innovation resulting in a new socio-technical regime. De-alignment and Re-alignment: Weaknesses in the regime sees the advent of competing new technologies leading to a dominant model. (E.g. the automobile replacing the horse as the primary means of land transport).
In Amusing Ourselves to Death Postman frames the information-action ratio in the context of the telegraph's invention. Prior to the telegraph, Postman says people received information relevant to their lives, creating a high correlation between information and action: "The information-action ratio was sufficiently close so that most people had ...