Neil Postman described Technopoly as a thoughtless world. It is a place where people have no thoughts and don't come up with anything on their own. "Technopoly eliminates alternatives to itself..." (Postman 48). This means that having a thoughtless civilization is the only way to run any society and keep all the people loyal to the teachings and laws. Brave New World is a technopoly because the people within the World State aren't allowed to have any thoughts. They take Soma to solve all of their emotional issues and problems they come across so that they are literally incapable of remotely coming up with anything tangible, and they are conditioned only to have a certain level of intelligence, so that they don't have to think about the job they were programmed to do. A technopoly makes thoughts "invisible and therefore irrelevant" (Postman 48). "And it does so by redefining what we mean by religion, by art, by family, by politics, by history, by truth, by privacy, by intelligence, so that our definitions fit its new requirements. Technopoly, in other words, is totalitarian technocracy" (Postman 48). This type of society takes everything that is important to people and changes them so that they fit the criteria that they want "their" people to live by and believe. If they want family and intelligence to no longer be important they make those things foreign to people. '" We predestine and condition. We decant our babies as socialized human beings, as Alphas or Epsilons, as future sewage workers or future... ' He was going to say 'future World Controllers,' but correcting himself, said 'future Directors of Hatcheries,' instead"' (Huxley 13). In Brave New World intelligence is predestined so that people don't try and become smarter than they were made to be and cause problems within then the World State or think that there is something better than what they are living through. They make thoughts of a higher intelligence and even family foreign because people are made in bottles and decanted. It goes further with a totalitarian technocracy which could also be seen as technopoly because it is a civilization completely dependent upon technological advances and not anything cultural, religious, or thoughtful. Within Brave New World Huxley defined this era within the emergence of the Henry Ford Empire. That is when everything technology took over and everything that had to do with religions and cultural customs was pushed away because advancement in machinery or technology was the only thing that was important.
Another idea that can define a society is the idea of a Technocracy, a society that is loosely controlled by social customs and religion, but is more focused on inventing. A man named Adam Smith named our species the "Economic Man" which are people "who are born with the instinct to barter and acquire wealth" (Postman 41). This differs from a technopoly because it was made up with people who had ideas and who advanced them into something that could make society progress. Within a technocracy royalty was not inherited by or reserved for men who had come from high origins, but for men who where full of intelligence and who were daring, which made civilizations soar. A Technopoly is where inventions had already taken over and were used to control people where as a technocracy is a place where intelligent people made the civilization soar because of the new things they created. A technocracy created new freedoms, new forms of social organization where nothing was left behind except a "tool-using" society. However, "technocracy found no clear place for the human soul, its citizens held to the belief that no increase in material wealth would compensate them for a culture that insulted their self respect" (Postman 48). Citizens that were involved in a technocracy society believed that material things such as money and even technology could not make up for a culture that took away the respect they had when they made things for themselves and built up their own societies. And so a new line was drawn with how far certain people who go with technology.
Brave New World is a civilization that started as a technocracy and ended as a technopoly. It was a civilization that had men such as Henry Ford build assembly lines and create machines that made the civilizations flourish, however it then turned from a technocracy to a technology where machines took over the lives of the people, and where only certain people were able to determine a person's intelligence, and a person's way of life through the technology. It was turned into a thoughtless society who's main function was to make people "consume manufactured articles as well as transport" (Huxley 23). They wanted to create a society that was completely dependent on technology, but was efficient through the ways of consumption which is exactly what a technopoly is. Fredrick Winslow Taylor had the same idea of efficiency. In 1925, the Interstate Commerce Commission held hearings of the application of Northeastern railroads as in increase in freight rates to compensate for higher wages for railroad workers. Although Taylor was not part of this trial his name was brought up many times because of his "scientific management" ideas and how it could solve every one's problems (Postman 50). However, it was ruled against because the Commerce thought the railroads were not making enough money. In 1911, Taylor published a book called Principles of Scientific Management, which is the first outlines of the thought- world of Technopoly (Postman 51). "These included the beliefs that the primary, if not the only, goal of human labor and thought is efficiency; that technical calculation is in all respects superior to human judgement; that in fact human judgment cannot be trusted, because it is plagued by laxity, ambiguity, and unnecessary complexity, that subjectivity is an obstacle to clear thinking; that what cannot be measured either does not exist or is of no value; and that affairs of citizens are best guided and conducted by experts" (Postman 51). This is the same idea as with Brave New World people were conditioned to only have a certain level of intelligence and then were only allowed to complete certain tasks with in the society. They did not want people trying to be better than they were or work above their intelligence level. Another way they created efficiency was to discard things that may cause an uproar. Such as when Mustapha Mond is reading "A New Theory of Biology" he thinks to himself that it is the , "... sort of idea that might easily decondition the more unsettled minds among the higher castes- make them lose their faith in happiness as the Sovereign Good and take to believing, instead, that the goal was somewhere beyond, somewhere outside the present human sphere; that the purpose of life was not the maintenance of well-being, but some intensification and refining of consciousness, some enlargement of knowledge" (Huxley 177). Just like Taylor the ideas within Brave New World were to keep people at such a low intelligence that they only worked towards the efficiency of the society by going to work and being consumers. They didn't want people reading books that may give them a greater meaning in life and show them that there may be something better they just need to get out there and find it. They wanted to keep people in the World State thinking that they had the ultimate happiness and that there was nothing better. This is a technopoly because they are keeping the people thought-less not allowing any of their knowledge to grow. The World State is dependent upon the people thinking the are happy and contributing to the efficiency of the society.
The ideas of Neil Postman and Ray Kurzweil's are extremely different. Neil Postman is against the idea of technology taking over. The "success of twentieth- century technology in providing Americans with convenience, speed, hygienic, and abundance was so obvious and promising that there seemed no reason to look for any others sources of fulfillment or creativity or purpose" (Postman 54). People didn't need a greater meaning in life because technology gave them everything they need and made it so easy. For everything people would ever need to work for there was an alternative that took care of the problem without people actually doing anything. Ray Kurzweil believes that one day technology will soon take over and that people will merge with technology. He also believes in bringing people back to life and having people live forever just by technological advances. These two men differ extremely because one is showing that there needs to be a greater meaning in life where as the other is showing what benefits people will be able to have if they let technology advance. I think the Aldous Huxley the author of Brave New World would also be trying to show that there is something more than technology. And things such as intelligence and families have to be valued because one day they could be gone. He is trying to show that technology can be helpful but going down the road of technocracy and technopoly as a way to run society can only lead to disaster and people's lives being run by the very thing they created.
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