Before reading chapter 4 in this book I suggest reading the back cover of the book as well as the introduction to find out where Mr. Postman is coming from. On the back cover it asserts that technology has gained sovereignty over social institutions and national life. Rather than being a society that uses technology we have become one that is shaped by it in every aspect - politics, intellect, religion, history - even privacy and truth. But Postman does not completely oppose technology, he only opposes the manner in which it is being used. In the introduction Postman states that this book tries to show when, how, and why technology has become a particularly dangerous enemy. It is a technopoly.

Chapter 4 is hostile to "social science" because it is regarded as an ally of this technopoly. Postman asserts that while people in the Middle Ages believed in the authority of their religion no matter what, nowadays people have the same sort of belief in science. We do this because our education system lacks a coherent world view. We believe in science because the ways of science, like the ways of God, are awesome and mysterious.

The great narrative of Progress has replaced the great narrative of the Bible in our society. We have gone from an age of information scarcity to one of information glut and have failed to recognize the dangers inherent in information glut. We have failed to ask what problems are solved by this glut of information. Information has become both the means and end of human creativity, giving information a metaphysical status.

Postman delineates the historical growth of information with the advent of the Gutenberg press, followed by a growth in the numbers of schools, which he asserts were set up as a means of controlling information, legitimizing some information and discrediting other information. Postman asserts that in our technopoly, control over information has broken down and that this can have lethal effects.

With the advent of the telegraph and the penny press, information became a commodity to be sold. The volume, distance and speed of transportation of information became important. The advent of photography tended to replace language as our dominant means for construing, understanding and testing reality. The interconnectedness of information was now missing, as was its context.

In our technopoly, the tie between information and human purpose has been severed. Information is disconnected from theory, meaning or purpose. Postman asserts that society is suffering from this disconnection.