Sacrafice of Humanity forTechnopoly

Neil Postman states that for a long time humanity has lived in a technocracy but has gradually moved into technopoly. In technocracy, technology and tradition “coexisted in uneasy tension” with technology being the stronger of the two opposing forces, but tradition could not be ignored (48). In Brave New World the reservation in New Mexico serves as the traditional part of the world that still exists, remains functional, and is “still too much alive to ignore” (48). Unfortunately, in that society, they do not treat it as something meaningful or relevant but something to look at curiously because they had never seen anything like it within their own technologically advanced world. Their society is not a technocracy but a technopoly. Postman describes technopoly as a society without tradition, where everything is redefined to suit this “totalitarian technocracy” (48). Postman refers to Brave New World as to what technopoly does to tradition. In the new society family no longer exists, there is no God, and what is immoral is sharing love with one person and staying with him/her.

Postman also discusses Frederick Taylor’s The Principles of Scientific Management. In it, Taylor says that the primary goal of “human labor and thought is efficiency” and that workers would be relieved of ay thought process or responsibilities because “the system would do the thinking for them” (51). Brave New World shows just how far society would go for efficiency. The new society creates humans programed to do a certain job in a certain part of the world to keep production moving and to assure that no one will rebel. Every one of the humans is given enough intelligence to do their work, so in a sense the society is doing the thinking for them. In addition to humanity not having to think it would also be treated as machinery. Frederick Taylor surmises that “society is best served when human beings are placed at the disposal of their techniques and technology” and that “human beings are, in a sense, worth less than their machinery” (52). Society has to survive by using and, like in Brave New World, recycling humans. This makes humans no better than machines because both could be easily replaced after they stop working.