Jordan Munn's Reviews > Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology

There are some good ideas in this book, but only incidentally so- Postman himself delivers almost nothing of merit. Postman tends to come across as a curmudgeon in his writing, but in Amusing Ourselves to Death, he presented a reasonable, fairly robust argument that felt supported by evidence. Even when he was opining, his position was plausible. In Technopoly, he fails to develop a convincing hierarchy of technological development.

Postman never admits as much, but across his books he has a gigantic bias for some never-really-defined golden era of the United States, against which every development since is an attack. But, whereas in AOtD, Postman kept close enough to his evidence, here he is way, way beyond support of his x's. Massively overextended, he pontificates with out-of-the-blue, sensational claims without a whiff of evidence. He makes bold, universal, absolute declarations with a straight face and expects the reader to trust him. He tries to persuade readers of the legitimacy of his coined terms- tool-using, technocracy, technopoly- by just using the words themselves over and over and over and over. He uses fallacious arguments as well- diverting to strawman tactics and guilt-by-association workarounds to attack what he percieves as huge cultural enemies. He does not maintain rigor in his definitions, and without much elaboration or evidence to support his claims, the writing comes across as the scattershot rant of a drunk, paranoid uncle.

By the end of the book, Postman's thesis (never clearly formulated in the beginning) is butchered beyond coherence. His argument bounces all over the place in some spastic attempts, and by the end, the reader is expected to swallow some mumbo-jumbo, half-baked prescription for thwarting the Technopoly, contradicting himself numerous times even in the final few pages. I expected so much more.