Horse, Blender, Car, Crockpot: Pick Your Gadgets
Paul Saffo, a director at the Institute for the Future in Menlo Park, Calif., who has studied how societies and individuals adopt technology, pointed out that the Amish were just one of many cultures that made selective use of technologies. The religious communities of Hutterites, Mennonites and American Shakers have all had rules for making decisions about which technologies to let in. The Shakers have been the most austere. In fact, Saffo said, “the Shakers made the Amish look like crazed acquisitive yuppies. The Amish get our attention because they’re in our back yard, in the middle of suburbs filled with people driving Volvos and using VCR’s.”
The Amish, Saffo said, are perhaps the most conspicuous example of the process of negotiation between humans and their hardware. If mainstream American consumers have prohibitions, the restrictions tend to be milder, and they make decisions that are more individual. “The Amish stand out because they make their decisions as an entire community,” Saffo said. “The rest of us make similar decisions every day, but we make them as individuals or at most as a single family.”
I disagree with this view. For one thing the Amish are not in the middle of suburbs anywhere I know of. They’re farmers, for one thing, and they keep their distance from the rest of us.
But more importantly, I think the Amish choose technology as individuals more than we “English” (as they call us) do. They make choices based on practicality and utility rather than marketing or sex appeal.
As noted elsewhere, they use telephones and cars, but only as they need to, and they don’t allow these tools to distract them.
No faceplates or ringtones, no multidisc CD changers or fancy wheel covers for them. A car is a faster buggy and a phone is a way to speak to someone at a distance, no more and no less.
Those individual choices are then reviewed and endorsed or rejected by the community. But the initial assessment is based on utility and practical value, not “can I afford it?” or “is this what all the other kids are carrying?”
I still get raised eyebrows when people discover we only have one television set and we only watch movies (on video or DVD) and baseball on it. We don’t have cable TV or a dish, and what are we missing? While a TiVo and its associated power sounds appealing — timeshifting as a way of breaking the shackles of the program grid is a breakthrough — what is the likelihood I would find time to go back and watch the programs I’ve recorded?
Obviously, I’m not against computers (the room in which I sit has 5, 3 of which are running) but I find that more manageable than an equivalent or smaller number of TVs. I still find The Disappearance of Childhood a good examination of TV’s effects on culture and learning.
As the sign at my kids’ school asks, “are you making good choices?”