Technopolies & Lance Lavine
Technopolies, from what Neil Postman writes, are technologies that are created that bring about complete change in a society. They alter they way people live life. As stated in Postman’s writing, “technological change is neither additive nor subtractive. It is ecological. I mean “ecological� in the same sense as the word is used by environmental scientists. One significant change generates total change.�
Lance Lavine spoke about the order of nature and how technology all around us determines how we interact with it. His example of windows and how that technology affects every person on a day to day basis is a great example of a technopoly. Windows are our barrier that keep us safe from the elements, yet still keep us in touch with the world outside us. This technopoly changed the way we live inside our shelters and how he perceive what nature really is. They let air in and allow ventilation within a space and they allow humans to witness nature and experience it, but only at a glance.
Gravity poses a problem against buildings because of its want to push things in and down. Roofs were designed, but were not able to withstand the force exerted on them by gravity if layed out across a large area. The development of the column or pillar, which are also technopolies, changed the way we design and build structures by support the weight exerted vertically on a roof and keep it from collapsing allowing us to design larger open areas in a building. The arch, which was perfected in ancient Rome, is another example of a technopoly that bears the weight of a structure and gravity that needs to span across a long distance.
Our development of dams deals with the natural technology of water. Dams redifined how we use water and turned into a technopoly when we learned how to use it to create electricity. It changed the way we think about saving, using, and containing water and is still changing today. The development of dams started in Mesopotamia almost 7,000 years ago to control the unpredictable Tigris and Euphrates Rivers. Instead ofnow just controlling flood waters, we are able to also use the water to power our country.
