Technopoly

Hoy he acabado el libro Technopoly de Neil Postman, uno de los autores de Teaching as a subversive activity.

El libro intenta ofrecer una visión crítica de la tecnología y sobre todo, de la cultura centrada alrededor de los avances tecnológicos.

Aunque no comparto todo lo que dice, algunas afirmaciones son destacables:

When the supply of information is no longer controllable, a general breakdown in psychic tranquility and social purpose occurs. Without defenses, people have no way of finding meaning in their experiences, lose their capacity to remember and have difficulty of imagining reasonable futures

I must emphasize that social institutions of all kinds function as control mechanisms [...]. Social institutions sometimes do their work simply by denying people access to information, but principally by directing how much weight and, therefore, value one must give to information.

Because of its seeming intelligence and impartiality, a computer has an almost magical tendency to direct attention away from the people in charge of bureaucratic functions and toward itself, as if the computer were the true source of authority. A bureaucrat armed with a computer is the unacknowledged legislator of our age, and a terrible burden to bear.

One picture, we are told, is worth a thousand words. But a thousand pictures, especially if they are of the same object, may not be worth anything at all.

What separates scientific statements from nonscientific statements is that the former can be subjected to the test of falsiability. What makes science possible is not our ability to recognize "truth" but our ability to recognize falsehood.