In the second half of the book “Technopoly” I found a lot of connections to the American culture and I also found statements from the author that I did not necessarily agree with. In chapter 6 the author discusses the character of American culture, he states “which I have previously discusses as being so congenial to the sovereignty of technology.”(Pg. 95). I found this very interesting because I believe that this statement is very accurate. American culture is without a doubt given royalty to technology and it is very important to many Americans, especially medical technology. Our culture is constantly donating money to cancer charities and other forms of charities to help develop a technology to find a cure for these diseases. The people that donate would not do so if they did not care about it. Another interesting point that stuck out to me in chapter 6 is the idea that ideas breed off other ideas. For example the stethoscope helped develop other medical technologies, the author states “ideas were amplified with each new instrument added to the doctor’s arsenal” (Pg. 100). I find this apparent in American culture all the times with ideas leading to other ideas. An example in our culture is in the car industry; new cars come out every year based on the idea of the car from the previous year.
In chapter 7 they discuss computer technology and they also talk about a man of importance named Charles Babbage who was discussed in the previous book that we read. I found it interesting because this just shows how important he is to computers because he is talked about in both books when computers are discussed. The main concept I took from this chapter is the metaphor of human as machine and machine as human. When the author discussed this I could really see where he was coming from, you cannot take the metaphor so literally but humans and machines do have characteristics in common. The book states “computers around the Arpanet network became sluggish” (Pg.113). This is very true, when a computer gets a virus or has something wrong with it becomes slow and is not as efficient, the same goes for humans, when a human become sick or has something wrong with him or her they are not as efficient and they become “sluggish”. It also discusses that computers can have defective parts, so can humans, and in both cases some of these parts can be replaced.
Chapter 8 discusses “Invisible Technologies” that are used in our culture. Many of these technologies that cannot be seen I would have never seen as a technology. I do agree with the author when he says this because like a computer was developed, so was something as simple as language. The funny thing about a technology like language is it probably took much longer to create than a computer, but it is taken for granted in our culture today because it is already developed. Just like computers now a days are taken for granted because they are already developed and there imbedded in our culture. Invisible technologies go through modifications just like technologies like computers and TVs do. For example there are words added to the English dictionary every year because language is constantly changing. We need knew words for new technologies. I did find a statement in Chapter 8 that I did not agree with, the author discusses statistics at one point in the chapter, he states “statistics creates an enormous amount of completely useless information” (Pg. 136). Although the author does go on to say that only some statistics are useless and some are actually very important. I believe that any statistic can useful to somebody, and if it is useful to someone then it is not useless. You never know what an individual could do with a statistic that may seem useless to you.
In chapter 9 the author discusses social science and how it links into technopoly. The author displays his idea of scientism which I found incredibly interesting, probably the most interesting peace of material I have read for this class. The author almost makes out science to be fantasy without many facts at all. He argues that science is very subjective and is technopolys biggest “illusion”. He states “Technopoly wishes to solve, once and for all, the dilemma of subjectivity.”(Pg. 158). I am certainly on the same page as the author. Technopoly is facts, it is not theories and there is no grey area in technopoly. Social science has too much grey area involved with it. Milgram’s experiment on authority that the author uses was fascinating to me. I have no doubt that authority has influence on weather people do what they are told or not, but there are far too many examples contradicting his experiment. This is not a fact, and this is exactly what technopoly is trying to eliminate. Social science never really proves anything as factual unlike other sciences and that is why it is not necessarily true. Maybe someday science will be able to prove the grey area in social science. Interestingly enough I believe that someday we will be able to answer questions such as, what is life.
Chapter 10 talks about the deterioration of symbols in our culture. I can honestly say that I agree with what the author is saying in this chapter. I truly believe that over time symbols tend to lose their importance with technology. One example for me is the symbol for murder. When I was young the first time I heard of a murder on the news I was frightened and by the time I heard of several murders the symbol for murder became far less important to me. The quote I found very interesting in this chapter is at the end when the author states “the only symbols left to use will be an f-15 fighter plane guided by an advanced computer system?”(Pg. 180). This quote really triggered a lot of thoughts for me. With the inventions of all these technologies we are almost eliminating the purpose of humans. The example here shows perfectly what I’m talking about, normally you would need someone to fly this plane but with new technologies this is no longer necessary and it’s less risky for humans. I can see robots being invented to do tedious jobs and this could also eliminate jobs for people. This quote really made me feel like we are eliminating our purpose as humans by creating all of this technology.
The final chapter talks about ways to put a stop to technopoly. The author suggests “going back to the basics” and teaching subjects like religion and the history of technology. I can agree with the author that the technopoly that we grow towards every day in the American culture is a serious problem. He poses a way to put a stop to it but I am not sure that it would be successful. In fact I believe the only way to put a halt to it is to stop production of new technology and quite possibly make some of the current technologies illegal and get them out of our culture somehow.
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