Techno Stuff.

According to Postman, a technopoly is simply a totalitarian technocracy, with a technocracy being “a society only loosely controlled by social custom and religions tradition and driven by the impulse to invent” (Postman 41). This idea is strikingly similar to the idea that humans are produced with the sole purpose of maximizing technological efficiency in Aldous Huxley’s novel Brave New World. In Brave New World, there is most definitely an impulse to invent, and these impulses are taken to extreme measures by the government, therefore fulfilling the “totalitarian” aspect of a totalitarian technocracy.

“Technocracies are concerned to invent machinery. That people’s lives are changed by machinery is taken as a matter of course, and that people must sometimes be treated as if they were machinery is considered a necessary and unfortunate condition of technological development” (Postman 52). Nothing relates to this more than the way humans are manufactured (yes, I said manufactured) in Brave New World. In the novel, human eggs are fertilized and incubated in a hatchery (in other words, a factory), and then each embryo is put through a series of treatments in order to adapt it and prepare it for the roll it will eventually play in society. In this technologically driven world, humans only exist to provide a purpose for machines, and no one bothers to question it. That is, until Bernard starts contemplating the idea that he may have a larger purpose in life. When the Director begins to notice Bernard’s changing attitude, he threatens to send him to Iceland, far enough away so his thoughts will not be able to influence anyone else. This seems to agree with Taylor’s idea that “technical calculation is in all respects superior to human judgment; that in fact human judgment cannot be trusted, because it is plagued by laxity, ambiguity, and unnecessary complexity; that subjectivity is an obstacle to clear thinking; that what cannot be measured either does not exist or is of no value and that the affairs of citizens are best guided and conducted by experts” (Postman 51). The ideas in Postman’s chapter that machines and technology are superior over humans strongly correlate with Aldous Huxley’s ideas in Brave New World.