Building Technopoly from the Top Down, Part 1
- Keith Stanglin
- 1 day ago
- 5 min read
Keith D. Stanglin
When survivors of the great, primeval deluge decided to unite their efforts toward an innovative project, they said, “Come, let us make bricks” (Gen 11:3). The oven-baked brick was a new invention, allowing builders to raise taller and stronger structures than ever before—in this case, a tower. The people’s aim was to make a name for themselves and not to scatter (Gen 11:4). The biblical text does not say exactly who was calling for the bricks and the construction of the great tower, but it was likely not an idea that arose from the commoners. Perhaps the working class eventually got on board and owned the idea, joining in the effort. But the next instance of brick-making in the Bible is in Egypt, when the Egyptian slavers ruthlessly oppressed the children of Israel “with bricks” (Exod 1:13-14), and later, following orders from Pharaoh himself, they required the Hebrew slaves to gather their own straw and still to “make bricks” at the same rate (Exod 5:6-9). Bricks meant profit for the ruling class, prestige for the wealthy, powerful, and elite, precisely those who are most interested in making a name for themselves at the expense of others. Bricks, in the hands of the wrong people, had become a means for oppression and dehumanization, an attempt to drive a wedge between God and his people (Exod 5:20-23).
The Bible does not address the challenge of technology very clearly. In contrast to the modern world, there was very little technological innovation in the ancient world, and it happened very slowly. On the positive side, the Bible implicitly supports some technologies simply by their assumed use, including technologies related to clothing, construction, various arts, weapons, transportation, and so on—an exhaustive list would be tedious. Indeed, Scripture—that is, γραφή (graphe) or writing—is itself a technology that works by representing the more natural, oral word with visual, manufactured symbols. God’s people used writing, and, though we have nothing written from Jesus, he read and presumably wrote (see Luke 4:16-17; John 8:6, 8). Christians were instrumental in the innovation and early use of the codex, which made documents more compact and finding specific passages much easier.
According to Scripture, however, technology is far from being an unqualified good. The biblical story of the tower, among the many etiologies it preserves, reflects, in the words of Nahum Sarna, “the great material revolution which the invention of the brick brought about,” about which development the biblical narrator is not neutral. In light of this new technology and its use, the biblical text offers a criticism of humanity’s arrogance and folly. The would-be brick-makers represent the origin of Babel or Babylon, the arrogant and presumptuous enemy of God’s people, a symbol of all that is hostile to God.
The story is also an example of a common trope in ancient literature, in which a new technology, usually originating from the gods, is introduced to humans but is not used virtuously, is mishandled, or simply spoils things by the often unintended consequences. Earlier in Genesis, Lamech’s boast of increased violence is reported in connection with the invention of bronze and iron (Gen 4:19, 22-24), after which violence became so widespread that it prompted a divine reboot to wipe the slate clean (Gen 6:1-4, 11-13). It is in this primeval context that the tower of Babel should be read.
The risks that accompanied the technology of metallurgy were well-known to the ancients. First Enoch 7-8 gives more detailed interpretations of the inventions and violence that led to the flood. Or to offer just one ancient pagan example, consider the Greek poet Hesiod, who, in Works and Days, describes the bronze race of men as terrible and strong, caring “only for the painful works of Ares and for acts of violence.” They were physically large and their “weapons were of bronze.” He goes on to describe, in his own day, the iron race, which he characterizes as most immoral and unjust. The parallels with the story told in Genesis are evident—metallurgy leads eventually to violence and moral decay.
Toward the end of Plato’s Phaedrus, Socrates tells the story of the Egyptian god, Thoth, who invented many arts (τέχναι, technai), including the art of writing. Enamored with his invention, Thoth presented it to the king of Thebes, boasting of its power to make people wise and improve their ability to remember things. But the Theban king was unimpressed. He first pointed out that the one who invents an art should not be the one to decide whether and how it is used. The inventor is too attached to the invention to give an objective assessment. Second, related to the first problem, the king added that writing will have the opposite effect that Thoth assumed. Writing will produce forgetfulness, discouraging the use of internal memory and memorization.
Socrates’ ancient tale illustrates two truths that have been known since antiquity, but are rarely acknowledged these days: first, technology tends to come with unintended consequences, many if not most of which are negative; and second, it is the innovators and the inventors of the technology who are least likely to foresee those negative outcomes. And, based on these other ancient stories, we may add a third truth: It is the rich and powerful—the inventors and the corporations who impose their inventions—who stand to gain the most wealth and power at the expense of all those who must live with the consequences of the technology. “Come, let us make bricks!” When it comes to technological change, Neil Postman claims “that there are always winners and losers, and that the winners always try to persuade the losers that they are really winners.”
In his book Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology (1993), Postman means by this term a society that has moved past mere tool-making and using and past technocracy, in which, although tools come to play “a central role in the thought-world of the culture” (p. 28), nevertheless there is room for social custom and even religious tradition, co-existing in uneasy tension with technology. In a Technopoly, however, the thought-world of tradition and religion disappears; Technopoly is “totalitarian technocracy” (48). In a Technopoly, the technology is no longer simply a tool but now does our thinking for us, and its aim is “a grand reductionism in which human life must find its meaning in machinery and technique” (52). “Technopoly is a state of culture. It is also a state of mind. It consists in the deification of technology, which means that culture seeks its authorization in technology, finds its satisfaction in technology, and takes its orders from technology” (71). It is, as the book’s subtitle suggests, “the surrender of culture to technology.” Since ubiquitous technology is simply the air breathed, those who live in a Technopoly are largely unaware of the origins and effects of their technologies (138). Postman identified the United States as the first Technopoly. He was correct, and this fact is much more obvious now than it was 30 years ago when he wrote it.
These themes are consistent with the three truths we identified from the ancient stories. Technology always comes with negative consequences, the people closest to the technology have the hardest time seeing or foreseeing those negative effects, and they and the people in charge have incentive to ignore or suppress those results, for they have the most to gain or lose. For this reason, Technopoly is mostly a top-down enterprise. It begins with the technocrats, and then it is laid on the masses, until the people themselves come to embrace it, for they are bound by it and can’t easily do without it. The descendants of the Luddites eventually wore clothing made by the mechanical looms, and the 14,000 people laid off by Amazon to make room for AI projects will probably still order their online goods from Amazon.
Watch for Part 2, coming next week!