Neil Postman’s definition of a technocracy is “a society only loosely controlled by social custom and religious tradition and driven by the impulse to invent” (Postman 41). There was a great climb in the area of technological advancements in the 19th century. Many different inventions were being made that would ease the workload of employees and greatly increase profits. A time came when employers realized they would need the minimal amount of employees and even very unskillful employees because technology was so advanced that an uneducated person was able to easily operate it. This caused a great disturbance with the skilled workers because they were replaced by machines and children who operated them. The employers were quite happy because they made a very profit. Although this move into a technocracy created a movement among the workers called the Luddite Movement. These workers would take out their rage on the machines that replaced them; they destroyed the very things that were there to take over. However Postman argues that even though “technocratic capitalism created slums and alienation, it is also true that such conditions were perceived as an evil that should be eradicated; that is to say, technocracies brought into being an increased respect for the average person, whose potential and even convenience became a matter of compelling political interest and urgent social policy” (Postman 44). Also, Postman views that technocratic culture as a positive movement since it removes the distinctions that separated the social classes. The key factor of a technocracy is that it does not completely eliminate tradition; it only subordinates it so it does not play such a great role in the lives of the people. A technopoly, on the other hand, involves the complete eradication of anything other than the actual technopoly. There are no other alternatives to the government because it has made sure that completely unknown to the people. Postman says that it redefines “what we mean by religion, by art, by family, by politics, by history, by truth, by intelligence, so that our definitions fit its new requirements. Technopoly, in other words, is totalitarian technocracy” (Postman 48). Postman’s assertion goes hand-in-hand with the concept of Brave New World. After all, Brave New World is a novel in which a technopoly controls all that goes on and they do not have any sort of tradition to go by. Frederick W. Taylor, in his book entitled The Principles of Scientific Management, expresses the idea that the only goal of human labor and though is efficiency. Is that not what Aldous Huxley shows in his novel? All of the different classes of people have specific tasks that they do and they make sure that those tasks are done efficiently and quickly. If those tasks are done inadequately then the person is quickly discarded and another is put in his or her place. Taylor also suggests that human judgment is wrong and technical calculation is far superior to it. Machines are, in a sense, more trustable than a human and the human is relatively useless compared to the machine. In a sense this is also true considering Brave New World; after all, the humans in Brave New World are exactly what the machines make them to be. Whether they turn out a Alpha, Beta, Delta or whatever else.
