Better Off_ Flipping the Switch on Technology - Eric Brende [109]
I must acknowledge a special debt to those whose substantial encouragement and advice at critical moments were especially vital: Leo Marx; David Noble; Dick Sclove; Homer White; Jeffrey Ruckman; Randy Testa; Paula and Jim Nedved; my indefatigable agent, John Ware; and my editor at HarperCollins, Alison Callahan.
And most of all, hats off to the “Minimites,” without whom this book would not have been possible.
E-Book Extra
An Interview and Insight into the Mind of Eric Brende, author of Better Off: Flipping the Switch on Technology
Question: As an MIT student, what motivated you to question technology?
Answer: Actually, I began to question technology before I came to MIT, and part of my story tells of the collision I had with the powers there. I had already begun to suspect something had gone terribly awry, namely that, by and large, our automated labor-saving machines are creating more labor than they save.
Question: How can you say machines create more labor?
Answer: What sense does it make to provide labor-saving machinery when we need physical exercise to be healthy? Yes, some onerous tasks should be lightened, but if you get rid of all of them, we simply have to go back and get the exercise anyway. So we’ve created two jobs out of one. Hence the ridiculous spectacle of people driving to the gym to recapture the exercise they miss by driving. Our gravest health problems today follow directly from sedentary lifestyles. We all pay for and work to pay the cost of that third task, paying for outrageous health insurance bills.
But it’s not just the loss of bodily exercise; it’s also the displacement of social and mental skills, which now must be duplicated. Because of television and computers, we’ve removed much of the need to interact in person with others or even to think for ourselves. Next we find we’re feeling unfulfilled, so we contrive "quality time" with neglected family members or invent hobbies as an outlet for our creative juices (tasks four and five). Increasing numbers of us don’t put it all together and become depressed with important social ties frayed.
One of the biggest ironies of our age is that, with all of our timesaving devices, we complain that "there’s not enough time." All this is to say nothing of the staggering cost of buying and maintaining technology_$30,000 for a new car and thousands more for gas and insurance—not to mention the cost of the environmental clean-up. We pay for that in extra work too.
Question: Do you recommend our Society goes cold turkey on technology?
Answer Obviously it wouldn’t do simply to drop everything all at once. That would be unrealistic. Besides, not all labor-saving machinery is detrimental. The question comes down to: How much do we need to live well and acquire real leisure? This is the question on which my whole book pivots. Early on, I leave MIT with my wife (freshly recruited from her cubicle in downtown Boston), and head for the hinterlands to find the answer.
Question: Where did you go to find out how much technology is enough?
Answer The journey begins with a chance encounter I have on a bus with a man in a long beard and old-fashioned clothing. When I talk to him, I discover he comes from a community that bans the use of all motors. He looks Amish, but is unspecific about the identity of the group. I persuade him to let me take a visit, and this leads to arrangements for a longer stay for me and my wife in our own cottage.
Question: What do you discover when you start leaving technology behind?
Answer I am very fearful at first of unremitting toil in the fields, but very early on the scales fall from my eyes: we discover that these people are quite adept at maximizing leisure by minimizing technology. They are not exactly Amish after all, but close cousins, in a denomination I nickname (preserving their privacy) the "Minimites."