Musings on Neil Postman
March 8, 2010
On Saturday 6 March, Amran Noordin was at Wardah Books discussing the thoughts of Neil Postman. It was a small, intimate session and the discussion was lively. We discussed the need to have a ‘conversation’ with technology, to be wary of its application in all spheres of life. On education, we discussed the dangers of bureaucracy, the uncritical use of computers, and the the need for a (or lack of a) narrative.
Postman says in his book Technopoly: Technopoly eliminates alternatives to itself in precisely the way Aldous Huxley outlined in Brave New World. It does not make them illegal. It does not make them immoral. It does not even make them unpopular. It makes them invisible and therefore irrelevant. And it does so by redefining what we mean by religion, by art, by family, by politics, by history, by truth, by privacy, by intelligence, so that our definitions fit its new requirements. Technopoly, in other words, is totalitarian technocracy.
Do join us for future in-store discussions.
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