Better Off_ Flipping the Switch on Technology - Eric Brende [4]
In Keniston’s sentiment, too, I divined a hint of the source of the homage (to which I myself had once been prone) that technology widely summoned: the fear that reducing it at all would send us backwards to the way things were “before technology”—to a nasty, brutish struggle for sheer survival. Technology’s very success in certain tasks incited a broader dread at its absence. All the more reason to clarify the terms of moderation, the only alternative to limitless increase and blind veneration.
Still, I was at a loss. Having framed the question in this way, I faced another problem. Until now my effort had been waged solely in the realm of ideas. But as Keniston’s travail showed, the real test of the matter lay in a concrete demonstration—a real-life experiment. It was probably not something I could carry out at an institute of technology.
The architecture of M.I.T. did little to endear me to its purposes. Most designs seemed to have taken their inspiration from the Pentagon. Newer buildings were as faceless and angular as the older ones. Even the neoclassical centerpiece of campus, the majestically domed edifice at 77 Massachusetts Avenue, somehow brought to my mind a nuclear reactor. Behind the facades the classrooms were sterile and the hallways straight and seemingly unending—one was actually nicknamed the “infinite corridor.” As a metaphor for the whole, the description fit—a means without an end.
In one of the few humane recesses of this vast impersonal complex, a remote corner of the S.T.S. student-faculty lounge, I found an old piano. No one ever used the room, so I could run through Chopin’s Barcarolle or Fantasie-Impromptu, or toss in a boogie-woogie rendition of “The Flight of the Bumble-Bee,” without being overheard. The passions flew free, and I savored a sense of sweet melancholy of the Polish master. After a session in this mood-venting chamber, I felt something like wine flowing through my extremities, as if my life-blood were being restored.
Then the compliments came. To my surprise, faculty and staff had begun leaving their doors slightly ajar in order to catch snatches of lyricism wafting through the corridors. Those hard bare walls had one advantage after all: their very emptiness opened up a resounding cavity that could be filled by what they lacked—soul, passion, spontaneity, or at least a musical distillate of these.
Between semesters, when money permitted, I traveled back to Kansas, and on one of these journeys I decided to take the bus. It wasn’t any cheaper than the plane, thanks to an airfare war, but I guess I thought if I were ever going to try out more rudimentary technology, I might as well do so now.
It wasn’t as bad as I thought it might be. The weather was nice, the scenery beautiful. There was plenty of time to unwind and relax and forget. The only tedious moments were the rest stops…until Pittsburgh. There I noticed a man getting on the bus with a full dark beard and wide-brimmed black hat. He looked Amish. I eyed him wistfully—and warily. I had once visited Lancaster County in hopes of finding a patch of human culture unravished by machines. At first I was taken in by the lush cornfields, immaculate white barns, two-hundred-year-old houses, old-fashioned buggies, and traditional costumes. Then I found out something odd: the yeomen had loopholes in their rules. They didn’t own cars, but they could lease them. Telephones were off limits in the house, but not in booths outside. Appliances were verboten if they ran on electricity, but not if on pressurized air, propane, or gasoline. Retired farmers often moved to Florida and congregated in special Amish condominiums. Locally they commuted to work from new subdivisions