Technopoly

In a technocracy, tools play a central role in the thought-world of the culture. Everything must give way, in some degree, to their development. The social and symbolic worlds become increasingly subject to the requirements of that development. Tools are not integrated into the culture; they attack the culture. They bid to become the culture. As a

We can imagine that Thamus would also have pointed out to Gutenberg, as he did to Theuth, that the new invention would create a vast population of readers who “will receive a quantity of information without proper instruction … [who will be] filled with the conceit of wisdom instead of real wisdom”; that reading, in other words, will compete with o

To take a later example: I have already alluded to the transformation of the mechanical clock in the fourteenth century from an instrument of religious observance to an instrument of commercial enterprise. That transformation is sometimes given a specific date—1370—when King Charles V ordered all citizens of Paris to regulate their private, commerc

Cultures may be classified into three types: tool-using cultures, technocracies, and technopolies.

“The mechanical clock,” as Lewis Mumford wrote, “made possible the idea of regular production, regular working hours and a standardized product.” In short, without the clock, capitalism would have been quite impossible.4 The paradox, the surprise, and the wonder are that the clock was invented by men who wanted to devote themselves more rigorously

New technologies alter the structure of our interests: the things we think about. They alter the character of our symbols: the things we think with. And they alter the nature of community: the arena in which thoughts develop.

A new technology does not add or subtract something. It changes everything.

We can be sure that some changes in cultural values occurred, although they could not have been as drastic as what happened to the Ihalmiut tribe early in the twentieth century, after the introduction of the rifle. As described by Farley Mowat in The People of the Deer, the replacement of bows and arrows with rifles is one of the most chilling tale

new technology does not add or subtract something. It changes everything.