Better Off: Flipping the Switch on Technology
Ratings4
Average rating3.8
15
Ratings4
Average rating3.8
E-Book Extras: ONE: An Interview and Insight into the Mind of Eric Brende; TWO: Ten Tips for a Leaner and More Leisurely Life in a World of TechnologyWhat happens when a graduate of MIT, the bastion of technological advancement, and his bride move to a community so primitive in its technology that even Amish groups consider it antiquated?Eric Brende conceives a real-life experiment: to see if, in fact, all our cell phones, wide-screen TVs, and SUVs have made life easier and better -- or whether life would be preferable without them. By turns, the query narrows down to a single question: What is the least we need to achieve the most? With this in mind, the Brendes ditch their car, electric stove, refrigerator, running water, and everything else motorized or "hooked to the grid" and begin an eighteen-month trial run -- one that dramatically changes the way they live, and proves entertaining and surprising to readers.Better OFF is a smart, often comedic, and always riveting book that also mingles scientific analysis with the human story, demonstrating how a world free of technological excess can shrink stress -- and waistlines -- and expand happiness, health, and leisure. Our notion that technophobes are backward gets turned on its head as the Brendes realize that the crucial technological decisions of their adopted Minimite community are made more soberly and deliberately than in the surrounding culture, and the result is greater -- not lesser -- mastery over the conditions of human existence.
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Overall a good book but the author comes across to be a bit of an evangelical fundamentalist with his anti-technology views. Perhaps I'm overly sensitive to that, though, having had similar feelings and broadcast them on my blog back when we lived in a yurt with no electricity or running water for 2 years. Ten years after that, living then in a highrise in Canada's biggest city I realized that it was pretty narrow-minded of me to be so sure that living that simply was not only right for me but the way everyone should be living. It was right for our family then, and a different way of life is right for us now.
The author seems to fall into the same trap I did - feeling that the fact that the life change he made then and that worked so well for him then was the life change that everyone else needs to make, and that many of society's ills are caused by the failure of everyone to do so.
