Lately I’ve been considering purchasing a pocket-sized device that would give me instant access to my four e-mail accounts, favorite websites, thousands of music files and endless supply of amateurish videos. All this and more for only half a mortgage payment and a $70 bill every month. Turns out, I really need something else altogether.
Now don’t get me wrong. I think the Web is fabulous (not to be confused with The Internets). I love experimenting with self-publishing, researching my whimsical interests and reading newspapers without a paid subscription. I just don’t need to do this while I should be doing something else, such as walking down the street, listening to a friend or observing the clouds in the sky.
Fortunately I am not alone in my pursuit to free up bandwidth so that I may tune into living more consciously. I started thinking about the communities that prohibit technology altogether, such as most of the Amish and Mennonites. To learn more about this lifestyle, I picked up a book by a man who spent a year and a half living among a group of Amish-type people (he called them “minimites”) who do not use any technology, including electricity, engine powered machinery or automobiles. In Better Off: Flipping the Switch on Technology, Eric Brende, an MIT graduate, and his wife find that not only do they survive under these conditions, they really thrive.
Brende’s account of his time living in this undisclosed location is poignant, funny and personal. Even though I found it difficult to identify with the strict religious ways of this community, I enjoyed learning more about an alternative approach to negotiating this modern world. I also felt myself romanticizing the quiet and simplicity that accompanies life without all the conveniences of technology.
I put the book down with the final impression that technology is not bad per se, it’s more that we need to restore a little more balance to how and when we use it. For me that means I am going to skip buying that lovely device and instead go write a letter to an old friend, read a book or listen closely to the wind chimes in my neighbor’s yard. As Brende suggests, “speeding through life with technology, you reduce what any given moment can hold.”
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