In Neil Postman’s The Improbable World, the author discusses the three frameworks of culture: tool-using, technocracies, and technopolies. He discusses the various forms of each culture, admitting that the tool-using culture is often primitive in comparison to technocracies and technopolies but they maintain a stable and concrete worldview. Postman views the United States as being the leading technopoly, a culture that highly values information to drive new advances. Such cultures lack a stable and concrete worldview. Postman’s main point is not to defend on of the three cultural classifications as being superior to the others. Nor is his main point to demonstrate the inferiority of any classification in comparison with the others. His main point is to conclude that all three of these cultural classifications have their positive and negative aspects, with a blending of the tool-using and the technopoly cultures as necessary to both information’s and humanity’s progress. As Portman concludes, “We proceed under the assumption that information is our friend, believing that cultures may suffer grievously from a lack of information, which, of course, they do. It is only now beginning to be understood that cultures may also suffer grievously from information glut, information without meaning, information without control mechanisms” (9).
Portman presents a well-constructed argument for his theory. He first provides a definition of the three classifications of culture, including the benefits and limitations of each. He traces the origins of the technocracy and technopoly to primarily American Western origins and value systems. He also makes a key distinction between all three cultural classifications. The tool-using culture maintains a stable and concrete worldview that provides meaning and order in their world. They may suffer from a lack of information, but they always have a wo
...