Thursday, December 27, 2012

Postman: techno-fighter

Those who resist American technopoly are people -

who pay no attention to a poll unless they know what questions were asked and why;

who refuse to accept efficiency as the pre-eminent goal of human relations;

who have freed themselves from the belief in the magical power of numbers, do not regard calculation as an adequate substitute for judgment, or precision as an synonym for truth;

who refuse to allow psychology or any "social science" to pre-empt the language and thought of common sense;

who are, at least, suspicious of the idea of progress, and who do not confuse information with understanding;

who do not regard the aged as irrelevant;

who take seriously the meaning of family loyalty and honour, and who, when they "reach out and touch someone" expect that person to be in the same room;

who take the great narratives of religion seriously and who do not believe science is the only system of thought capable of producing truth;

who know the difference between the sacred and the profane, and who do not wink at tradition for modernity's sake;

who admire technological ingenuity but do not think it represents the highest possible form of human achievement.

A resistance fighter understands that technology must never be accepted as part of the natural order of things, that every technology - from an IQ test to an automobile to a television set to a computer - is a product of a particular economic  and political context and carries with it a program, an agenda, and a philosophy that may or may not be life-enhancing and that therefore require scrutiny, criticism and control.  In short, a technological resistance fighter maintains an epistemological and psychic distance from any technology, so that it always appears somewhat strange, never inevitable, never natural.

Technopoly, p183-185

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