--- product_id: 2752905 title: "Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology" brand: "neil postman" price: "₱141" currency: PHP in_stock: false reviews_count: 13 url: https://www.desertcart.ph/products/2752905-technopoly-the-surrender-of-culture-to-technology store_origin: PH region: Philippines --- # Radical societal impact Provocative tech critique Insightful cultural analysis Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology **Brand:** neil postman **Price:** ₱141 **Availability:** ❌ Out of Stock ## Summary > 📖 Decode the future: When culture surrenders to technology, will you lead or follow? ## Quick Answers - **What is this?** Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology by neil postman - **How much does it cost?** ₱141 with free shipping - **Is it available?** Currently out of stock - **Where can I buy it?** [www.desertcart.ph](https://www.desertcart.ph/products/2752905-technopoly-the-surrender-of-culture-to-technology) ## Best For - neil postman enthusiasts ## Why This Product - Trusted neil postman brand quality - Free international shipping included - Worldwide delivery with tracking - 15-day hassle-free returns ## Key Features - • **A Call to Awareness:** Equip yourself with the knowledge to navigate and influence a tech-dominated world. - • **Top-Ranked & Trusted:** Join thousands of readers with a 4.5-star rating and strong bestseller status. - • **Cultural Shift Unveiled:** Explore how technology reshapes every facet of society, from politics to art. - • **Thought-Provoking & Witty:** Engage with sharp, often unsettling insights that challenge the status quo. - • **Essential for Managers & Innovators:** Understand the tech-driven forces shaping modern leadership and decision-making. ## Overview Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology is a critically acclaimed book that examines how technology has evolved from a mere tool to the dominant force shaping society’s values, politics, education, and truth. With a 4.5-star rating from over 700 reviews and strong rankings in Computer History & Culture, this book is a must-read for professionals seeking to understand and influence the tech-driven transformation of our world. ## Description A witty, often terrifying that chronicles our transformation into a society that is shaped by technology—from the acclaimed author of Amusing Ourselves to Death. "A provocative book ... A tool for fighting back against the tools that run our lives." — Dallas Morning News The story of our society's transformation into a Technopoly: a society that no longer merely uses technology as a support system but instead is shaped by it—with radical consequences for the meanings of politics, art, education, intelligence, and truth. ## Technical Specifications | Specification | Value | |---------------|-------| | Dimensions | 5.16 x 0.63 x 7.99 inches | | Edition | Reprint | | Isbn 10 | 0679745408 | | Isbn 13 | 978-0679745402 | | Item Weight | 8 ounces | | Language | English | | Print Length | 240 pages | | Publication Date | March 31, 1993 | | Publisher | Vintage | ## Images ![Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology - Image 1](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/81zzdnDtVJL.jpg) ## Available Options This product comes in different **Format** options. ## Customer Reviews ### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ This is a Provocative, Informative, and Disturbing Book! *by on Reviewed in the United States June 10, 2000* 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! ### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Vital and Powerful Examination of Forces Most Don't Realize Operation on Them *by on Reviewed in the United States May 29, 2017* Stunning and original work. The author Neil Postman sets the tone at the outset that this is no ordinary work. His interpretation of Plato's Myth of Thamus and Theus is one of the wisest and perhaps most penetrating openings I've ever read. This sets up a lucid description of the interplay between man, religion, and machine thru time dating all way back to ancient Greeks.Although he overplays his hand a bit when discussing what he perceives as technology's totalitarian grip on society, more broadly his argument has merit, explanatory insight, and predictive value. (Overplayed for example that "Technopoly" completely robs us of history, when in fact the data boom it can be argued is creating a clearer record of it.) But this is a minor criticism, as overall his critiques and insights are spot-on ... it's almost as if he's viewing the world from a 4th dimension the rest of us can't see...or more superstitiously, he's clairvoyant. From this he raises important challenges to the Information Age ethos that insufficient information is the assumed source of major problems, for example from this passage:"You need only ask yourself, What is the problem in the Middle East, or South Africa, or Northern Ireland? Is it lack of information that keeps these conflicts at fever pitch? Is it lack of information about how to grow food that keeps millions at starvation levels? Is it lack of information that brings soaring crime rates and physical decay to our cities? Is it lack of information that leads to high divorce rates and keeps the beds of mental institutions filled to overflowing?"He provides a clear rebuke to the notion that social science is superior to literary tradition in understanding human behavior. It's ultimately about the age of old challenge of converting qualitative information into quantitative information, so it be made into a form to make generalized observations about large populations and bespoke ones about its individuals. Postman clearly reasons that abstraction and generalization that are made to seem irrefutable by attaching the qualifier "science" to "social" clearly do much more harm than good.This book goes to dark places, and perhaps "dark" is the best word to describe its overall tone. At times I found myself reading it not because I wanted to, but because I had to. But with an inspiring final chapter on how to counter the negative consequences of what he calls "Technopoly", and uplifting commentary on mankind derived from the classic "Ascent of Man", it ends on a liberating note.Again I'm not saying it's a perfect work either ... I wonder for example how Postman would view advances in AI nearly 30 years since publish date at being more "human-like". He seems to assume that people will always be more morally responsible than machines. But with all the strife in the world can we rely on human judgement and action, versus a machine that be programmed to behave within strict guidelines? He also makes his own presumed unchallengable "leap of faith" that life without meaning is essentially the worse kind. Something that a zen Buddhist could launch a serious challenge to, as in destructiveness of "gaining" notions.My own criticisms aside, this remains one of the most fundamentally important works I've ever read. It's also very topical and an important reality-check with all the hype-selling these days in tech (some of it most certainly legit, some most certainly not). ### ⭐⭐⭐⭐ Should tech change worry us? *by on Reviewed in the United States April 29, 2014* Postman has received awards for clarity of his writing. At NYU university he was professor of education for 40 years. He has much critically to say about our growing ‘Technopoly’ (his term) including on education among other areas of human endeavor. His observations boil down to the fact we are racing ahead creating and improving our tech tools without taking time to anticipate breadth of their influence. This book is one among many regarding current rapid growth of our technological tools but his position is more cautiously reflective than the average technologist. He laments that we are enthusiastically racing to create improved tools, i.e. improved means, but give insufficient consideration whether they will produce improved ends. Let alone whether the ends attained are effectively adverse to the best interests of humanity.The book was published at a time (1992) when the internet, largest and most influential of our tech toys, was in its youth. In this book Postman writes presciently about ubiquity of technology’s present influence to which we are daily witness. His life long writing experience is not as a technologist but as a humanist one of whose interests is the English language. From this perspective his analysis focuses on a reciprocal manipulation of people by tech and vice versa. Are we using these new tools or are they using us is generally the question to which he offers insights. They also change our language and the meaning of words in it.In the process he offers up examples from humanity’s history in which a ‘tech’ change produced results in use much broader or damaging than anticipated. At one time soldiers journeyed to a battfield on the back of a horse. There they disembarked to fight in a battle since the horse was only a means of conveyance. Invention of the stirrup changed that. Subsequently soldiers not only rode toward battle but fought from the back of horse in the battle. A tech innovation which changed the nature of warfare of the time. A very small example this but indicative of a rality of completely unintended consequences. A more powerful example could be the physics that led to technology that led to creation of nuclear weapons that led to Hiroshima and Nagasaki. ## Frequently Bought Together - Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology - Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business - The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains --- ## Why Shop on Desertcart? - 🛒 **Trusted by 1.3+ Million Shoppers** — Serving international shoppers since 2016 - 🌍 **Shop Globally** — Access 737+ million products across 21 categories - 💰 **No Hidden Fees** — All customs, duties, and taxes included in the price - 🔄 **15-Day Free Returns** — Hassle-free returns (30 days for PRO members) - 🔒 **Secure Payments** — Trusted payment options with buyer protection - ⭐ **TrustPilot Rated 4.5/5** — Based on 8,000+ happy customer reviews **Shop now:** [https://www.desertcart.ph/products/2752905-technopoly-the-surrender-of-culture-to-technology](https://www.desertcart.ph/products/2752905-technopoly-the-surrender-of-culture-to-technology) --- *Product available on Desertcart Philippines* *Store origin: PH* *Last updated: 2026-11-01*