Rating: 
Summary: Disappointing
Review: The book is an uncompelling mixture of techno-skepticism, banality, conservatism, and remediation. In short, an eclectic stew with a catchy title. Postman's main thesis is that America has become a technopoly, which means that culture has lost its moral authority to technology. Technology has become the solution to whatever questions are asked, ushering in the reign of experts. Whatever else, there's a lot to agree with here.But to understand where we are, we have to understand where we've been. Postman presents a three-stage view of history whose main thrust is that traditional religious and metaphysical beliefs have been steadily replaced by scientific methods and utilitarian values, while tradition is viewed as a source of error and a shackle on knowledge. This historical march culminates in the present stage of technopoly, which is defined as a totalitarian technocracy that has swept tradition with its non-technological values and meta-narratives into history's ash can. In short, culture, the last hold-out, has finally surrendered to the conquering armies of technology, making the sweep portentiously complete. (In Postman's taxonomy, computers extend the frontiers of technopoly but do not define it.) All in all, his outline of history's main stages is interesting in detail if not exactly original. However, like others of a Weberian bent, Postman portrays technology as something of an independent force, creating its own logic and standards, taking on a life of its own. Nevertheless, such high-flying abstractions fail to link up with people, and fail to ask the crucial societal question of who owns and directs the technology of our age or any age; that is, in whose interest does nuclear energy, computerization, or surveillance equipment now operate. A taxonomy like Postman's works to obscure this key question and others like it. The problem with the reign of experts may lie not with technology itself, but with those who have the power to direct and set the goals of the research and development. We should be mindful that behind the technology of any age, there are always people and people with definite interests. This is an important sociological approach the book leaves critically unadressed. Postman correctly sees the problem that lies in a computerized information glut versus a lack of meaningful ordering principles, a disconnect that leaves us with mounting piles of meaningless information. His solution however is anemic. He recommends an eclectic return to the meta-narratives of the past, an apparent attempt to re-establish a core of non-technological values within the utilitarian regime of technopoly. Yet how meta-narratives like the Bible or Communist Manifesto can re-establish credibility in a skeptical age that attacks even the authority of science is unclear to say the least. There is a problem of value-grounding in postmodern culture, but one that is not answered by a literary return to the past, no matter how great the appeal. In this key regard the book clearly flounders, and given Postman's prior accomplishments, the book adds up to a trendy disappointment.
Rating: 
Summary: Provocative, often disagreable, but definitely worth reading
Review: The overall message of the book is very profound and I think Western society would be better off if more people have read it. Postman is also a great writer who will no doubt keep you entertained. There is one catch: The book seems to have a number of claims that I thought were factually incorrect, plus a bunch of others that just seem to go overboard ideologically. Overall, the argument is far from "water tight". In the end, though, I was convinced and felt that the book was definitely worth the time. Plus, personally I enjoy reading books that keep you on your tows. Based on this, I recommend this book to those readers who can handle an author that they do not always 100% agree with, readers who enjoy mentally "debating" an author. If you tend to toss a book the moment you find a flaw in the argument (or two, or three), this might not be the best book for you.
Rating:
Summary: Provocative, often disagreable, but definitely worth reading
Review: The overall message of the book is very profound and I think Western society would be better off if more people have read it. Postman is also a great writer who will no doubt keep you entertained. There is one catch: The book seems to have a number of claims that I thought were factually incorrect, plus a bunch of others that just seem to go overboard ideologically. Overall, the argument is far from "water tight". In the end, though, I was convinced and felt that the book was definitely worth the time. Plus, personally I enjoy reading books that keep you on your tows. Based on this, I recommend this book to those readers who can handle an author that they do not always 100% agree with, readers who enjoy mentally "debating" an author. If you tend to toss a book the moment you find a flaw in the argument (or two, or three), this might not be the best book for you.
Rating:
Summary: This is a Provocative, Informative, and Disturbing Book!
Review: There is much to learn from this important book. Over the last two hundred years, both science & technology have rapidly & irrevocably changed the face of the earth. In the postindustrial world, we've banished infectious diseases from our midst (at least temporarily), have instituted public health & sanitation measures, and have made creature comfort a part of everyman's lifestyle. Yet, there is profound and widespread concern regarding exactly where technological innovation is taking us, what this mysterious journey will cost us in terms of a sustainable and palatable ecosystem, and exactly who (if anyone) is driving this huge and anonymous innovative juggernaut. This book deals provocatively with this issue; i.e. the promulgation of a culture in which science and technology have come to assume the pivotal role in our society. Sociologist Max Weber warned almost 100 years ago of an alarming tendency in western civilization to displace our tradition-based religious cultural ethos with a dangerously superficial "faux" rationality in which all decisions and all measures would come to be made more and more exclusively by scientific and logical means. Yet science by its very nature cannot answer questions dealing with values, advising us as to what is right, or good, or best. It can only speak to us in terms of effective and efficient means to achieve such cultural values and social ends. It is this tension between a human-oriented cultural ethos, on the one hand, and scientific progress through technological innovation not so oriented on the other that is Mr. Postman's real subject. Mr. Postman understands that science and technology are both our friends and our antagonists, and as our amigo the Unabomber has pointed out, what technical innovation introduces as "voluntary and optional" soon becomes "compulsory and obligatory", as did the introduction of automobiles and traffic regulation. In this fashion, by flooding our social, economic, and political environment with items and objects that drive the nature of society as much as enhance it (can anyone now doubt that the introduction of personal computers poses such a double-bind?), we are radically changing the nature of our society and its culture without benefit of any guiding values, precepts, or notions as to what is best for our people and our community other than to allow frenzied competition between technological rivals to see who can unlease the latest/neatest technological innovation to make our lives easier or entertain us more cleverly. Our direction in terms of progress seems to be random, at best, and Postman argues most persuasively that there are hidden dangers to our freedoms, our prosperity, and even our awareness that result from this surrender to the indifferent impulses of technological innovation. We best recognize this indifference and the dangers it poses for a free and open society. As author Sales Kirkpatrick notes in his wonderful book "Rebels Against the Future", "technology is never neutral"; it carries out its exclusively rational and logical intent to its conclusion. Yet often the fact that this conclusion is not necessarily in the public interest or consistent with the long-term goals and aspirations of our culture seems somehow irrelevant. Yet it is anything but irrelevant; it is central to the question as to how critically important decisions regarding our future and well-being are to be made, and on what basis. Will we have a society in which such decisions are made through open debate in a public forum, or one in which the decisions are made for us, based on market projections, what can be sold and distributed, researched based on its sales potential in anonymous test tubes and clinical labs, where the latest in scientific certainty is readied for pandemic public introduction? Time is growing short and we must soon decide. This is a fascinating, provocative, and important book. Read it!
Rating:
Summary: Technology's hold on culture examined
Review: This book presents a good overview of the state of our culture, with it's worship of technology. Postman does not deny that there are benefits of technological advances, but that there are incredible losses when technology is placed at the center of society. Postman uses wit and humour to make his points, which helps the lay reader to keep engaged. His recommendations at the end show that he is not cynical, though realistic about what can be done.
Rating:
Summary: Pope Postman
Review: This book was my first encounter with Postman and I intend to read 'Amusing...'. With all the references to 'God', implicitly the Christian god, it seems Postman wants to be a self-ordained pope of a new index. For a more balanced approach I recommend Jane Healey's 'Failure to Connect', even though it focuses on computer use in education. Thand dog that no communist regime can burn Postman's book and that no pope claims it was delivered on stone tablets from a mountain top. For the opposite view, see the sadly neglected Timothy Leary's 'Chaos and Cyberculture'.
Rating:
Summary: Technopoly
Review: This entertaining romp through the harder reaches of technological determinism presents a more radical assessment of technology's impact on society. The history and logic are sound, if at times unsupportable. Postman is nothing if not inflammatory, and his is a voice that is not only accessible, but probably necessary. His genius is using the very technologies he pretends to decry to give us pause to think about them ourselves. This is good work that I don't take seriously beyond that most valuable of services. He is one of a kind, and this book will receive plenty of negative reviews. In case you missed it, this isn't one of those.
Rating:
Summary: A profoundly important and often disturbing book
Review: This is one of those books that make you think the only reason it isn't permanently on the New York Times Bestseller List (or the top 100 of the Amazon.com list) is because the general public is either too afraid to read it after seeing the subtitle, or people in power have been doing everything they can to render it unattractive. With every new innovation and social argument today, from birth control and feminism to the media and privacy, we all find ourselves suspiciously willing to turn over every intellectual rock and make hamburger out of every sacred cow in the search for enemies, heroes, reasons and justifications for our beliefs and actions. Yet with fear and trembling we all ignore this one- which Neil Postman makes all too clear may be the only one we should be discussing: the surrendering of all of our true sense of freedom, independence, responsibility and community to the wrathful, jealous god of Technology. In the opening to the book he quotes a philosopher who sums up his entire point with an idea that puts our entire cultural period into a disturbing perspective: regardless of its basis in scientific innovation and theory, technology "is a branch of moral philosophy, not science." The mere thought that our entire world and the daily transformations taking place in it may be in the wrong hands- at our request- and that THAT is the explanation for the incredible degree of unquestioned, unexamined change, is enough to make you afraid of your computer. And remember, this book was published years before Dolly the cloned sheep came to town, or we were anywhere near as close to charting the entire human genome. (Like the relationship of Einstein's theories to the Manhattan Project, with that alone we have no idea what world we are in store for or what war in the twenty-first century will be like; yet we go blindly onward, giving our scientific leaders and CEOs of industry carte blanche, without questioning if we have a choice.) Postman simply makes it clear that the people who are taking us where we are headed don't really know what they're doing anymore than we do in terms of the implications for our culture- or any culture's- future, and really don't care. Because they have sold their souls to the idea of progress and markets- falling in line with the dictates of the cult of technology. Many countries around the world see Globalization as little more than the Americanization of the world, like Rome around the time of Christ. Postman's TECHNOPOLY makes it clear that that force may have malevolent implications because it could actually be built upon the transformation of American democracy and culture into that of technological fascism. With every chapter, some almost hilarious in the little absudities we live by made clear, some scary in their implications and explanations of the seemingly unrelated ills of our world, Neil Postman creates one of the greatest and most important diagnoses of the Achilles heel of modern Western Society ever written. TECHNOPOLY is prophetic, and like every prophet, what he has to say will only be apocalyptic to our world if we choose to ignore it.
Rating:
Summary: A real eye opener
Review: What is going on with the world to day? If you've ever asked this question this books for you. It not only explains the theories behind the present trends, but forces us to look at what caused them. From the tool age to the technology age, Postman has put before us a look at what our culture values and why. Why do we put values on thing such as the human mind. Is the information we get from the world of technology being filtered or has it become so bad that we are no longer free thinking humans, but controled by what we're told by technology. Read this book and make up you own conclusions on the world in which we live, this Technopoly.
Rating: 
Summary: A STUDENT'S VIEW OF POSTMAN'S TECHNOPOLY
Review: What was Neil Postman thinking? Having been forced to suffer through this book for a college class, I feel dirty and violated. It was one of the most boring books I have ever read and it was filled with some of the most ridiculous tripe my eyes have ever passed over. Avoid this book at all costs- reading Postman is like drinking a glass of sand.
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