Communications

To the editor:

I read Jonathan Coopersmith's review of my book, Better Off: Flipping the Switch on Technology, with a mixture of fascination and incredulity. As a former graduate student from MIT who ended up shunning academic life, it was surreal to see my extra-curricular exploits subject to a scholarly going-over—and to find out the scholar failed to double-check several textual references. Given these oversights, it was not surprising that no mention was made of the main point of the book, either. In case anyone is interested, it was that, generally speaking, the best way to save time and labor today would be to integrate the human functions that technology now separates, rather than to add more technology.

Then I came to the summation Coopersmith substituted for my own: in seeking to live with far less than the standard quota of modern technology, he said, I was pursuing a "mirage." In a time when real-world pressures—of a shrinking oil supply, a growing Chinese economy, and instability fomented by terrorism and natural calamity—may plausibly compel westerners to begin living more similarly to the Amish than they have in a long while, Professor Coopersmith warns us that my eighteen-month stay with plain people was an unrealistic flight of fancy.

Having lived it, I know I did not imagine the experience. And these people, whom I nickname "Minimites," thrive using a carefully chosen repertoire of hand tools, work animals, and non-motorized machines. Although he did not deny their success outright, Coopersmith's skepticism reminded me of the learned dismissal of a medical doctor who, confronting a cure brought on by homeopathy, refuses to accept it because it doesn't align with received medical theory.

And what is the a priori notion that my book contradicts? To quote Coopersmith: "If everyone lived like the Mennonites, who would work the steel mills? Like the American cowboy and the yeoman farmer, the myth of total independence from others is alluring—and inaccurate."

Having laid out the terms in this way, Coopersmith leaves me nowhere to go. With technology, it's either all or nothing. Either I'm into it or I'm out of it, and since the Minimites and I aren't into it, we must be out of it (and so are found wanting). But it is precisely this all-or-nothing proposition that my book seeks to revise. "To clarify the terms of moderation," I say on p. 10, is "the only alternative to limitless increase and blind veneration." The question, in short, is not whether to eliminate technology, but how much of it to preserve.

The answer I glean is not so much a specific list as a principle: minimation, or using as little automation as is practicable to achieve one's goals. This is not a puritanical avoidance or self-isolation. A dieter is not necessarily a vegetarian (or a hermit). That the Minimites borrow certain products from the wider industrial world is not a violation, but a vindication, of their wisdom. And if all the steelworkers suddenly went on strike, I'm sure the Minimites would adapt faster than anyone. Or they could just as well strike in turn. Who, after all, is more vulnerable—agrarians without steelworkers, or steelworkers without agrarians?

Today in St. Louis my wife and I continue our endeavor to minimize automation without eliminating it (the paperback edition, by the way, expands on this phase of our experiment as well as on just how little technology the Minimites really need to live well). To posit total independence as a condition for a cultural movement is to assume it can develop outside the culture in which it exists. And that, I'm sure both Professor Coopersmith and I can agree, is indeed a mirage.

Eric Brende

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To the editor:

I admire Eric Brende for living eighteen months among his "plain people," in the same way I admire people who join the Peace Corps, VISTA, Teach for America, and similar groups. These few have the courage...