And DEFINITELY scuba diving chihuahuas.
A technopoly, according to media fiend and cultural critic Neil Postman, is a society that believes that the sole aim of human labor and work is expediency, and that technical calculation beats human opinion any day. The meddling of citizens in a technopoly then, are best guided by "experts" (ie - machines). Basically, in a technopoly we are robbed of all agency and willingly give our souls over to the wretched gluttonous machine.
Postman wasn't down with this - he was a humanist and maintained that new technology could never substitute human values.
He believes that the U.S. is the only country to have actually developed into a technopoly. He believes this because citizens don't see the downside of a society riddled with technology. Instead, they crave more and more ... until information becomes garbage, utterly incapable of answering our questions and ends up obscuring solutions to even our mundane problems. He fears that the next generations of people to come will be used to technology, not use it.
I think this exemplifies the general fear revolving around the Internet and the crazy technologies that stem from it. I fear this, but I will be the first to admit that, sometimes I feel myself loosing footing in the real, (print) world, and slipping down a slope of mechanical accessories. (Telus totally conned into buying a Blackberry last weekend, thereby rendering me a much more frequent user of facebook, text messaging and even blackberry instant messenger. I don't really know how to use this contraption yet but already I feel inescapably connected.) How "attatched" do we have to be to our digital accessories in order to become "technopolized" as a society?
Also, what does this mean for the artist?
Digital art and flash poems don't really speak to me. Judging from what I have seen so far, I find them uninspiring and trite. I can get down with a little musical remix or mash up here and there, of course, (I'm only human, and even worse, a college kid). But when it comes to visual art, I need something in which I can feel the love in. I don't mean necessarily something made by human hands, because media like silkscreen and lithography don't require any human touching, and often that is the point (Warhol's mechanically produce prints emphasized the coldness of commerical duplication and consumerism), but I guess I need resources that are of this world.
...I oil paint, so maybe I'm showing my bias. At any rate, I like what Mark Amerika did with Filmtext, and Grammatron is pretty cool too, but I'm not sure I would classify them as art. Maybe I would feel better about classifying this as art if e-art had a category of its own by which to judge this umbrella genre of creations.
Niel P. reckons the solution to the technopoly is a good old fashioned education in history, and social effects of technology.
Since you asked, My solution to the problem here would involve instilling an appreciation of nature in our children. Yeah yeah yeah, super corny, I know ... but knowledge of our primal roots is humbling beyond any knowledge of history. In a sense, it is history, but history before we made history as humans. Before we built ourselves up a fancy society, the challenges posed by the elements was unparalleled by that of the numerous worries of technology. And when it comes down to it I don't think there will ever be a day when a tsunami or tornado couldn't mess us up like a computer crash. We'd be miserable, but we would survive. Contrary to popular belief, we would survive.
We owe a lot to our natural environment, and when we lose that, it will be all turf and plastic palm trees. Which sounds kind of fun, (but I guess we need trees to breathe and what not). Besides, I couldn't handle a spring break themed life for more than the length of reading week.
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