Wendell Berry, "Why I'm Not Going to Buy a Computer" 1987 Harpers

  • Doesn't admire computer makers much more than energy industry
    • Seduce struggling family farmers to believe problems solved by buying another expensive piece of equipment
    • Propaganda campaigns got computers into schools that need books
  • Computers not bringing us any close to what matters to Berry
  • Berry's values: Peace, economic justice, ecological healthy, political honesty, family and community stability and good work
    • Computers might enhance good work by ending drudgery of retyping, increase political honesty and make democracy work better by group email lists, improve ecological health by reducing paper use? (In U.S. 13% of electric power used to make/run computers and operate internet; this use growing rapidly.
  • Do computers improve writing?
      • Quicker, better? More revisions?
    • Berry's argues no: When someone using a computers writes better than Dante and it is shown that this is due to his use of computers then he will speak with more respect about computers
  • Berry objects to getting the latest when what you have now works fine and nothing wrong with it
    • Examples of people getting rid of perfectly good things to have newest/latest?
      • Cars, clothes, bikes Computers! Obsolete so fast?
      • Distinguish between new abilities old one's can't do and j ust changing things so old one is perceived to be no good anymore
    • "Planned obsolescence"
  • Relation to his wife
    • Wife types his hand written draft on 1956 typewriter, in as good condition as when got it
    • She's his best critic and edits and revises as she types
    • A great literary cottage industry doesn't want to get rid of
    • To get a computer would mean ending this treasured working relationship with his wife
  • Tech innovation always requires discarding old model
  • Present day tech typically involves superceding not just something but someone
    • Tech caused unemployment
  • What about his wife using a computer?
    • More efficient for retyping and correcting
    • Computer is not a idea machine; she can still do all valuable intellectual work
    • She would be doing less drudgery work (retyping), but still be able to do editing-the meaningful work
  • Berry's standards for tech innovation in his own work:
    • New tool should be cheaper than one it replaces
    • As small as one it replaces
    • Do work that is clearly and demonstrably better than one it replaces
    • It should use less energy than the one it replaces
    • Should use some form of solar energy, such as that of body
      • How is the body solar energy? Why solar energy better? Renewable/non-renewable, sutainable/non-sustainable
    • Repairable by a person of ordinary intelligence, provided has right tools
      • (Keep things relatively simple)
    • Purchasable and repairable as near as home as possible
      • Community self sufficiency, opposition to national/international chain stores
    • Come from privately owned shop that take it back for maintenance and repairs
      • Opposes throw-away mentality
    • It should not replace or disrupt anything good that already exists, including family and community relations
      • Extremely stringent requirement. Important techs will bring changes that disrupts. So can't let the benefits of a technology outweigh its negative aspects?
  • CRITICISMS OF BERRY
  • Berry is a sexist, male chauvinist, who exploits his wife
    • Wife as a handy alternative to enslavement by computer
    • Low-tech, energy saving device, drop off pile of written notes on wife and get back finished manuscript-computer can't do that
    • Wife is cheap, reparable, good for family structure
    • Berry is supporting subservience of one class to another
    • So Berry opposes vacuum cleaners and washing machines because wife can beat rugs and hand wash clothes?
  • Berry's reply
    • Insulting to his wife, as if stupid drone
    • Maybe she wants and likes this work and some meaning out of it and not working for nothing
  • Berry's got wrong target: Electricity not the problem, but how energy companies produce it
    • More sensible to correct precise error rather than simply ignore their product
    • Should protest against strip mining, but can keep using computer with clear conscience
      • Wouldn't you actually have to protest for this to be plausible?
    • To not use any of the products of technological practices that Luddites oppose would be nearly impossible (and might severely disadvantage you)
  • Berry's principle impossible to universalize:
    • Should Sierra club not use printing machines but hand copy all their material? (Because they fight against wasteful practices of energy industries)
  • Berry is inconsistent and shouldn't sleep well at night because magazines he publishes in support (via advertisements) nature/community destroying businesses
    • Natural Rural Electric Association, Marlboro, McDonald Douglas
  • Berry response: This critic thinks I should be a fanatic
    • I'm not
    • I am a person of this century and an implicated in many practices I regret
    • Didn't say and doesn't know how to end right away all involvement in harmful tech
    • Wants to limit that involvement and knows how to do that to an extent
    • If tech does damage to world it is reasonable/moral to try to limit one's use of the tech
    • That he's implicated partially, doesn't mean he is inconsistent to try to lessen that implication and arguing against being more implicated
  • Berry's critique of consumption/consumerism
    • What is wrong with conservation movement is has clear conscience
    • Guilty are always someplace else
    • Believe that only production causes damage and ignores that consumption supports that production
    • People want to limit production w/o limiting consumption and conscience of consumer
    • Virtually all consumption today is extravagant (in developed world) and consumes the world
    • One can't understand history of Appalachian coal field exploitation (or rest of story about energy exploitation) and plug in an appliance with a clear conscience
    • To extent we consume in our present circumstances we are guilty
    • To extent we are guilt consumers and conservationists, we are absurd
    • Writing letters to protect env. and giving to env. org is important
      • But government and conservation organizations alone won't make us a conserving society
    • We can do something directly to solve our share of the problems
      • Not buy the products
    • Our first duty to reduce so far as we can our own consumption.