The Dawn Treader

Here is my scan outline (this outline is in Clinton's book)

Name of Book: Technopoly, The surrender of culture to technology, 1992, Knopf

Time Involved: 45 minutes

1. Author: Neil Postman

2. Author’s Perspective: The dust jacket contains minimal biographical information.  Postman is a communications theorist and teaches at New York University.  He is critical of technology in this book and speaks critically against "scientism".  Don't know his worldview from this scan.  I have only browsed Amusing Ourselves to Death (Postman's more famous book) ... so I don't really have background informaiton on him.

3. Organization of Book:  11 chapters.  Postman uses first three chapters to define his terms and taxonomy of culture : like tool-using cultures, technocracies and technopolies.  Chapters 4 and 5 focus in on what conditions enable technopolies to happen.  Chapters 6, 7 , 8, and 9 focus on "for instances" ... case in points ... supportive evidence for why Postman believes our culture is a technopoly.    Chapter 10 discusses the watering down of symbols in our culture.  Chapter 11 is Postman's answer to the problem of Technopolies.

4. What the Author Intends to Accomplish: Postman wants to sound the alarm.  He sees technology not merely shaping culture but attacking it.  He recognizes that our culture deifies technology and wants to draw us back into a balanced view of technology.  He sees the same danger as C.S. Lewis saw in the Abolition of Man ... a culture of men without chests.

5. Further Assessment Reading:  This book deserves to be read at a more serious level.   I will probably ransack the bibliography looking for other seminal books in the area of technology and worldview.

6. Further Evaluative Reading:   The book requires pre-reading and reading.  I am not sure it deserves studying.  The next step is to pre-read the book ... which is to do a survey of the book for structure and thematic content.  I should be able to frame Postman's theme in a single statement when I am done.

Miscellaneous notes about my first attempt at Scan reading:

I found scanning somewhat klunky to do the first time around.  I probably went beyond scanning into browsing -- not sure about that.  It is hard to not dip into chapters and read chunks of words.

This book does not have a lot of elements to it ( meaning forwards, prefaces, endorsements, chapter helps, charts ) etc.  It was hard to find short-cuts to getting the gist of the book without actually reading little peices of the book.

I printed out and read several professional reviews before my scan (ht: Amazon.com)  This was helpful in giving me a sense of what Postman was trying to say before I began picking my way through the book.

Technopoly is not a big book nor is it written in a scholarly way.  I don't think his target audience is academic types.  If I were more well read in the area of technology and worldview, I am sure this book would fall into the ransack category.  That is, I would cherry pick a chapter or two for fresh stuff, but skip a lot of Postman's story telling.  As it is, I will need to read most of this book.  Because I have read a fair bit on worldview, I anticipate moving quickly through the philosophical stuff (e.g. the chapter on scientism).

One of my goals in reading this book will be to determine who has shaped Postman's views on technology and culture, and which books he cites often or in a positive light.