Technopoly by Neil Postman

children, “to conform to the regular celerity of the machine,” and in doing so gave an enormous boost to the growth of modern forms of technocratic capitalism. In 1780, twenty factories were under his control, for which a grateful nation knighted him, and from which an equally grateful son inherited a fortune. Arkwright may fairly be thought of as the first—even archetypal—technocratic capitalist. He exemplified in every particular the type of nineteenth-century entrepreneur to come. As Siegfried Giedion has described him, Arkwright created the first mechanization of production “[in] a hostile environment, without protectors, without government subsidy, but nourished by a relentless utilitarianism that feared no financial risk or danger.” By the beginning of the nineteenth century, England was spawning such entrepreneurs in every major city. By 1806, the concept of the power loom, introduced by Edmund Cartwright (a clergyman no less), was revolutionizing the textile industry by eliminating,once and for all, skilled workers, replacing them with workers who merely kept the machines operating.
    By 1850, the machine-tool industry was developed—machines to make machines. And beginning in the 1860s, especially in America, a collective fervor for invention took hold of the masses. To quote Giedion again: “Everyone invented, whoever owned an enterprise sought ways and means to make his goods more speedily, more perfectly, and often of improved beauty. Anonymously and inconspicuously the old tools were transformed into modern instruments.” 1 Because of their familiarity, it is not necessary to describe in detail all of the inventions of the nineteenth century, including those which gave substance to the phrase “communications revolution”: the photograph and telegraph (1830s), rotary-power printing (1840s), the typewriter (1860s), the transatlantic cable (1866), the telephone (1876), motion pictures and wireless telegraphy (1895). Alfred North Whitehead summed it up best when he remarked that the greatest invention of the nineteenth century was the idea of invention itself. We had learned
how
to invent things, and the question of
why
we invent things receded in importance. The idea that if something could be done it should be done was born in the nineteenth century. And along with it, there developed a profound belief in all the principles through which invention succeeds: objectivity, efficiency, expertise, standardization, measurement, and progress. It also came to be believed that the engine of technological progress worked most efficiently when people are conceived of not as children of God or even as citizens but as consumers—that is to say, as markets.
    Not everyone agreed, of course, especially with the last notion. In England, William Blake wrote of the “dark Satanic mills” which stripped men of their souls. Matthew Arnold warned that “faith in machinery” was mankind’s greatest menace. Carlyle, Ruskin, and William Morris railed against the spiritual degradation brought by industrial progress. In France,Balzac, Flaubert, and Zola documented in their novels the spiritual emptiness of “Economic man” and the poverty of the acquisitive impulse.
    The nineteenth century also saw the emergence of “utopian” communities, of which perhaps the most famous is Robert Owen’s experimental community in Scotland called New Lanark. There, he established a model factory community, providing reduced working hours, improved living conditions, and innovative education for the children of workers. In 1824, Owen came to America and founded another utopia at New Harmony, Indiana. Although none of his or other experiments endured, dozens were tried in an effort to reduce the human costs of a technocracy. 2
    We also must not omit mentioning the rise and fall of the much-maligned Luddite Movement. The origin of the term is obscure, some believing that it refers to the actions of a youth named Ludlum who, being