Biography & Autobiography |
Technology & Engineering |
Science & Technology |
Summary
Summary
What 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.
Reviews (1)
Kirkus Review
By paring back his need for modern technology in the manner of Scott and Helen Nearing or E.F. Schumacher, debut author Brende reclaims his life from machines. Machines were getting on his nerves, he writes: complex, fuel-consuming entities with demands of their own, they were depriving him of physical activity and robbing him of time with his family. In a stroke of fortune, Brende made contact with an agricultural community he neither names nor locates that lived without modern technology such as electricity and motors. The members were a mix of Amish, Mennonite, and ordinary folk--"Minimites," Brende plugs them, "in honor of both their Mennonite noncomformity and their current predilection to gain a maximum of ends from a minimum of technological means." Although initially nervous, the author soon learned that a deft use of wits did as well as scads of modern technology (at least at the level of activity he was operating on) and that the spirit of cooperation and sharing in the community lightened every task. The work was hard, but the pace was slow, and "in being slower, time is more capacious." Brende adequately introduces his neighbors, takes part in the requisite barn-raising, and keeps an eye peeled to the community's cultureways, yet what really interests him--and what he describes with his greatest flow and ease--is how little technology he can use and live a fulfilled life. He spent 18 months in the community, mostly as a research project for his M.I.T. thesis, and is now refining his vision in the Midwest, where he makes soap and drives a rickshaw. Primitive technology often better serves both the task and the soul, he asserts: "to cater to an inanimate object's needs is one thing; to aid and abet in our own replacement is another." Well-tested ammunition for the slower-is-better, less-is-more school of thought. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.