Technopoly and Brave New World

Neil Postman's Technopoly makes many connections between Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World and similar situations, to the real world. Postman distinguishes the difference between a technocracy, “a society only loosely controlled by social custom and religious tradition and driven by the impulse to invent,” and a technopoly, which is a “totalitarian technocracy” (41, 48). Postman even ventures to say that the United States is a technopoly, which is slightly frightening since he also compares it to Brave New World. The underlying reason why technopolies are so powerful is broken down when they are compared to how things are run in Brave New World: “Technopoly eliminates alternatives to itself in precisely the way Aldous Huxley outlined in Brave New World. It does not make them illegal. It does not make them immoral. It does not even make them unpopular. It makes them invisible and therefore irrelevant” (48). This is easily seen in the novel since everyone believes they are working for what they believe in, which is progress. However, they cannot see that they are actually working for what their leaders believe in, since they are brainwashed not to see it.

In the nineteenth century, when inventions were booming, a new problem was introduced: “We had learned how to invent things, and the question of why we invent things receded in importance” (42). This seems similar to the question Bernard faced in the novel, as he also questioned the why, and so did a child in the beginning of the novel. However, no one else wished to know the why, since the how has become the only important thing in their society. Thankfully, in our world there is still a small hope, because “although 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” (48). This sets us apart from the people in the novel because we still have self-respect, not just a dependence on our society and a desire for progress.