Wendell Berry is an American treasure: the 89-year-old Kentucky farmer is also a philosopher, poet, theologian, and writer of fiction, and many of his pronouncements bear the timeless wisdom of a biblical prophet. I’ve read his work from several genres and was curious to see how this 1987 essay – originally published in Harper’s Magazine and reprinted, along with some letters to the editor in response, plus extra commentary in the form of a 1990 essay, by Penguin in 2018 as the 50th and final entry in their Penguin Modern pamphlet series – might resonate with my own reluctance to adopt current technology.
The title essay is brief, barely filling 4.5 pages of a small-format paperback. It’s so concise that it would be difficult to summarize in many fewer words, but I’ll run through the points he makes across the initial essay, the replies to the correspondence, and a follow-up piece entitled “Feminism, the Body and the Machine” (1989). Berry laments his reliance on energy corporations and wants to limit that as much as possible. He decries consumerism in general; he isn’t going to acquire something just to be ‘keeping up with the times’. He doesn’t believe a computer will make his work better, and it doesn’t meet his criteria for a useful tool (smaller, cheaper and less energy-intensive than what it replaces; sourced locally and easily repaired by a non-specialist). He is perfectly happy with his current arrangement: he writes his work by hand and his wife types it up for him. He is loath to lose this human touch.
The letters to the editor, predictably, accuse him of self-righteousness for depicting his choice as the more virtuous one. The correspondents also felt they had to stand up for Berry’s wife, who might have better things to do than act as her husband’s secretary. This is the only time the author becomes slightly defensive, basically saying, ‘you don’t know anything about me, my wife or my marriage … maybe she wants to!’ He doubles down on the environmental harm caused by technology and consumerism, acknowledging his continued dependence on fossil fuels and vowing to avoid them, and unnecessary purchases, where possible.
If some technology does damage to the world, … then why is it not reasonable, and indeed moral, to try to limit one’s use of that technology?
To the extent that we consume, in our present circumstances, we are guilty. To the extent that we guilty consumers are conservationists, we are absurd. … can we do something directly to solve our share of the problem? … Why then is not my first duty to reduce, so far as I can, my own consumption?
If the use of a computer is a new idea, then a newer one is not to use one.
He even appears to speak prophetically to the rise of artificial intelligence:
My wish simply is to live my life as fully as I can. … And in our time this means that we must save ourselves from the products that we are asked to buy in order, ultimately, to replace ourselves. The danger most immediately to be feared in ‘technological progress’ is the degradation and obsolescence of the body.
Certain of his arguments felt relevant to me as I ponder my own relationship to technology. I compose all my reviews on a 19-year-old personal computer that’s not connected to the Internet. I don’t listen to the radio and have seen maybe three films in the past two years. We’ve been television-free for a decade and I have never regretted it (Berry: “It is easy – it is even a luxury – to deny oneself the use of a television set, and I zealously practice that form of self-denial. Every time I see television (at other people’s houses), I am more inclined to congratulate myself on my deprivation.”).
I find it so hard to adjust to new tech that my reluctance may have shaded into suspicion. I’m certainly no early adopter, but I’d also object to the label “Luddite”: since 2013 I’ve been using e-readers, which are invaluable in my reviewing work. But for 15 years or more I have been looking at other people and their smartphones with disdain. I prided myself on my resistance. Stubbornness seemed like a virtue when the alternative was spending a lot of money on something I didn’t need.
Receiving my first cell phone in July 2004 (with my dad at left; at Dulles airport).
Two months ago, though, I finally gave in and accepted a hand-me-down Motorola Android phone from my father-in-law, after nearly 20 years of using an old-style mobile phone. As we were renegotiating our phone and Internet contract, I got virtually unlimited minutes and data on this device for £6/month, with no initial outlay. Had I been forced to make a purchase, I think I would still be holding out. But I had gotten to the point where refusal was cutting off my nose to spite my face. Why keep martyring myself – saying I couldn’t make important household phone calls because they drained my pay-as-you-go credit; learning complex workarounds to post to Instagram from my PC; taking crap photos on a digital camera held together with a rubber band? Why resist utility just for the sake of it?
To be clear, this was not a matter of saving time. I’m not a busy person. Plus I believe there is value in slowing down and acting deliberately. (See this book-based article I wrote for the Los Angeles Review of Books in 2018 on the benefits of “wasting time.”) Mindless scrolling is as much a temptation on a PC as on a phone, so avoiding social media was not a motive for me; others with addictive tendencies may decide otherwise. Nor did I view convenience as reason enough per se. However, I admit I was attracted to the efficiency of a pocket-sized device that can at once replace a computer, pager, telephone, Rolodex, phonebook, camera, photo album, television screen, music player, camcorder, Dictaphone, stopwatch, calculator, map, satnav, flashlight, encyclopaedia, Kindle library, calendar, diary, Post-It notes, notebook, alarm clock and mirror. (Have I missed anything?) Talk about multi-tasking!
Out with the old, in with the new?
I would still say that I object to tech serving as a status symbol or a basis for self-importance, and I’d be pretty dubious about it ever being a worthwhile hobby. Should this phone fail me in future, I’ll copy my husband’s habit of buying a secondhand handset for £60–80. I wouldn’t acquire something that represented new extraction of rare resources. Treating things (or people) as disposable is anathema to me, something about which I know Berry would agree. I’m naturally parsimonious, obsessive about keeping things going for as long as possible and recycling them responsibly when they reach their end of life.
It’s one reason why I’ve gotten involved in the Repair Café movement. I volunteer for our local branch, which started up in February, on the admin and publicity side of things. The old-fashioned, make-do-and-mend ethos appeals to me. It’s the same spirit evoked in the lyrics of American singer-songwriter Mark Erelli’s “Analog Hero”:
He’s the fix-it man, the fix-it man
If he can’t put it back together, then it was never worth a damn
Maybe he’s crazy for trying to save what’s already gone
Now it ain’t even broken and we’re going for the upgrade
Nobody thinks twice ’bout what we’re really throwing away
It’s out with the old, in with the new…
I can imagine Wendell Berry still pecking out his words on a typewriter on his Kentucky farm. He’s an analogue hero, too. And he doesn’t go nearly as far as Mark Boyle, whose radical life experiment is recounted in The Way Home: Tales from a life without technology, which I reviewed for Shiny New Books in 2019.
I have pretty much made my peace with owning a smartphone. I have few apps and am still more likely to work at my PC or on paper. I’ll concede that I enjoy being able to post to X or Instagram wherever I am, and to keep up with messages on the go. (I used to have to say cryptic things to friends like, “once I leave the house, I will be unavailable except by text.”) Mostly, I’m relieved to have shed the frustrations of outmoded tech. Though I still keep my Nokia brick by my bedside as a trusty alarm clock – and a torch for when the cat wakes me between 2 and 5 each morning.
Ultimately, I feel, a smartphone is a tool like any other. It’s how you use it. Salman Rushdie comes to much the same conclusion about the would-be murder weapon wielded against him: “a knife is a tool, and acquires meaning from the use we make of it. It is morally neutral” (from Knife).
Berry’s argument about overreliance on energy remains a good one, but we are all so complicit in so many ways – even more so than in the late 1980s when he was writing – that avoiding the computer, and now the smartphone, doesn’t seem to hold particular merit. While this pamphlet will be but a quaint curio piece for most readers (rather than a parallel to the battle of wills I’ve conducted with myself), it is engaging and convincing, and the societal issues it considers are still ones to be wrestled with.
My copy was purchased with part of a £30 voucher I received free from Penguin UK for being part of their “Bookmarks” online community – answering polls, surveys, etc.
Bookish Beck = Rebecca Foster. American transplant to England. Freelance proofreader and book reviewer.
Bookish Beck 
I’ve always had a mixed relationship with tech as well. We had a computer at home from when I was very little, and I remember learning MS DOS commands to start up games! Then we were early adopters of the internet at home too. But I resisted getting my own mobile phone until I went to uni and didn’t get a smartphone until 2016 (which seems so much less impressive given how much longer you’ve held out!). I can’t do without it now, especially google maps and transport apps, but I also wish it wasn’t necessary.
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I like Heather Parry’s term (in her Substack article today) “tech-sceptical.”
I remember when a computer screen was just green words against a black background. We didn’t have a PC at home until I was in middle school (and no Internet access until I was in high school), but when I was little I would keep busy writing stories on the computer in my dad’s office in the church basement. (I remember my magnum opus was something like “The Adventures of Pizza and Cheese,” who I think were a cat and a mouse?)
Holding out for a smartphone until c. age 30 is impressive! I have a poor sense of direction, so being able to access maps will certainly come in handy.
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Your stories sound brilliant! And love the green words/black background memory. My first typed story was about how my little sister was kidnapped by a monster who took her into the bamboo (grew by our house in DC). I obviously had very mixed feelings about whether I wanted a sister or not at the time, as I kept on having her kidnapped and rescued over and over again… It was printed out on that old fashioned printer paper that had tear off strips with holes at the sides.
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That’s hilarious! (Were your parents worried?!) Oh yes, I remember that paper.
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We live in a world where it’s expected that people will have smartphones and consequently many organisations (public and private sector) build their customer interaction systems on this belief. My 93 year old dad had a problem with his Amazon account and needed to reset his password – they just kept sending him text messages with instructions to click on a link – impossible since his basic mobile didn’t have that capability. Would they listen – no, they just kept insisting that he click on the link.
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You’re absolutely right. I’ve noticed before that Home Office forms, e.g. for EU residents wanting to stay in the UK after Brexit, were only accessible via apps — what were people supposed to do if they didn’t have a smartphone and couldn’t afford one?
It used to be that I would get texts from my doctor’s surgery and because I couldn’t simply click a button to see the attachments there would be a ludicrously long web address I had to type into my PC.
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I think I’ve gone through phases in my life when technology has enamoured me and phases when it has disgusted me. I’m no Luddite, but I’m definitely not someone who upgrades his iPhone every year to keep up with the Jones or Kardashians or someone who is up to date with a PC with good storage and the latest graphics card. I don’t even know what the technical terms mean! Having said that, as a blogger I’m trying to weave myself into the web of connectedness because in this age, you need readers if you’re writing on the internet and it is difficult to get an audience without using the latest apps or social media platforms. As far as consumerism is concerned, it is what it is. Not all of us can live without a computer or without OTT entertainment. But if we consider people working in sweatshops to give us our goods or writers being exploited for our pleasure, it’s hard to not feel guilt unless one is apathetic and just wants meat on his table without thinking of the animal slaughtered that made it happen. Don’t think about the causes; just enjoy your privilege is the way of the world now, and I’m just as guilty as most others. Finally, I’ll end by saying a myriad factors goes into using the latest technology just like making the choice to be a vegetarian (which I’m not!) Convenience for example. Why would I hand write everything and end up with carpal tunnel syndrome when I can type, edit and format using good software. And I love e-readers because buying e-books is cheaper, easier to get, and quicker than buying a paperback. As far as AI is concerned though, that’s a ball game I don’t want to play!
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Thank you for reading and commenting! I managed just fine as a blogger without apps for 9 years and can’t see a smartphone changing much about my work life or social media presence. You make a good point that we don’t often think about the end results of our purchasing decisions, or where what we consume comes from.
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I’m probably more at the early adopter end of things but that said, I’m slow to replace things and push-on, despite tech not working optimally – recently replaced my 15 year old computer and now enjoying the fact that I don’t have to turn it on 20 minutes before I actually want to use it! 😀
I would be hard pushed to live without my smartphone – use it for everything (to the point where I don’t carry a bag a purse anymore, which feels liberating!).
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Good for you for making that computer last as long as possible 🙂 It only makes sense. But yes, it does get frustrating when tech is so slow that it hampers instead of assists daily life.
I know a lot of people who only carry a phone (perhaps with bank card, etc. in the case). I’d be worried about losing everything all at once!
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I too am the possessor of a several-years-old Motorola which does me just fine. I never come anywhere near getting through my £6.00 monthly Giffgaff goodybag allowance, much to the uncomprehending astonishment of my 18 year old grandsons, who can’t manage on £30. All the same, I’m a bit conflcted about how much I depend on it to get me through all kinds of tasks. Interestingly, my husband is a smartphone-resister. He hasn’t twigged (though I tell him often enough) that instead he relies on me to do smart-phone related tasks on my phone on his behalf. I too am resistant to upgrading anything just for the sake of it – and I do wish we had a Repair Cafe here. And no, I don’t think I’ve got the get-up-and-go to start one, though I’ll volunteer to help if someone else does.
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Ah, and I was like your husband, having to ask Chris to do all manner of things for me (look up a weather forecast, message a friend, phone a handyman, check a fact, etc.). It’s nice to be self-sufficient.
I don’t blame you — the Repair Cafe coordinator I work with seems to put in as much work as a full-time employee! (Though she’s retired.)
Would Harrogate be your nearest? https://www.repaircafe.org/en/cafe/harrogate-repair-cafe/
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“Mostly, I’m relieved to have shed the frustrations of outmoded tech.”—This would be the selling point for me if I’d held out as long as you have, and is the primary reason why my guilt over owning a smartphone is nonexistent. It’s cumbersome to live a reasonably active life (even a non-busy one!) in the current day without smartphone access, and in some ways it facilitates resource-saving (I’m thinking of stuff like restaurants whose menus are paperless, accessible by QR codes). As far as environmental stewardship goes, there’s definitely more I could do, but not owning a car, limiting airplane usage to long-haul flights, and eating much less meat than I used to are sustainable tweaks that don’t make my life nearly as hard as not having regular access to Google Maps and on-the-go messaging would.
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Exactly — after 20 years with the cheapest of Nokia bricks, I felt it was okay to move up to a secondhand smartphone. It’s hardly like I’m going for something with all the (unnecessary) bells and whistles. The advance in photo quality over my ailing digital camera was reason enough, really.
It’s tough for people like us who rely on transatlantic flights to see family. But yes, I try to do the same. I won’t fly for holidays otherwise and we don’t own a car but pay a monthly fee to share a neighbour’s second car.
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That sharing arrangement sounds nice! I imagine once I get my full licence we’ll do Zipcar for holidays but I certainly don’t intend to purchase a car unless we move further away from public transport nodes.
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It works out quite well for us: we pay them £30/month + C’s insurance and pay for the fuel we use, of course. By comparison, Co-wheels (which we have sometimes resorted to) is very expensive. But for occasional use it can be done.
I’ve never been brave enough to learn to drive in the UK! So I only drive when I’m back in the States, every year or so.
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I finally convinced my husband that he needed a portable telephone when he was determined to take a 1,500 car trip alone in order to meet up with a friend in the wilds of Colorado for a rock hunting expedition. He has gradually come to see the benefit of a portable cell phone.
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Wow, what an adventure! Yes, you would need a cell phone with reliable coverage for that.
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I have also lived quite happily without a television for a long time and only got a smart phone, when most employers moved from Blackberry to iPhone. However, I must admit it is handy with a smart phone these days, where everything from bank transactions to flight check-in are much easier with the app. Privately, I still own an old Nokia, which can only be used to talk and text.
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I hadn’t even thought about banking, etc. They are incredibly useful machines!
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Wow, congrats on holding out as long as you did. But no shame in getting the smartphone! Very responsible to get one secondhand. I saw Ross Gay speak this spring and he said he still has a “dumb phone” but I know he has a laptop, so he’s connected. He talked about liking getting lost and having to ask people for directions. Which sounds like a nightmare to me!
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I have such a poor sense of direction that I can probably still get lost even with a smartphone (I did when I borrowed my mother’s iPhone some years back!).
There has been a revival of interest in dumb phones, I think because people want to slow down the pace of life and not have messages interrupting at all times. I’m going to turn off all audible notifications on my phone for that reason.
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Smart! I fully know that my iPhone has wrecked my attention span. Or rather, *I* have wrecked my attention span by using my iPhone. 🙃
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I’m another one who is resistant to tech as well, though I have had a smart phone for a while. I prefer physical copies of things in almost every instance from the books I read to keeping track on a calendar. People are sometimes surprised that we have young children and no TV but it’s the way I grew up and I’ll be keeping phones out of my kids’ hands as long as I can!
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Good for you! I know parents who shove a screen in front of a child at any time to keep it quiet, and others who have no screens, so there’s clearly more than one way to do it.
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For our family, we choose to have strict guidelines and times around screens. I’m a big believer in the idea that it’s important to let kids be bored!
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Ultimately I think you and I have similar perspectives on this, first on admiring Berry, but also on viewing devices as tools, tho some of the details in our situations are different? I obsess about minimising the impact in the supply chain (with tech, with everything, the more I learn about slave labour around the globe) and have paid more to repair items than the cost of replacement (things last longer). But it’s also an exercise in constantly altering my habits to reduce consumption in other ways (e.g. downloading not streaming cuz I try to keep up with films/shows) and being vigilant about deliberate choices re: time and when to engage with new tech. I just finished Aja Barber’s Consumed (probably more readily available over there than here?) which you might enjoy; I’m not sure she’d have anything to say that you don’t already know, but neither did Berry I suppose? It all sparks reflection and invites possibilities. Berry’s multi-book fictional narrative is on my list of longawaited reading projects; maybe I’ll try for next year.
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(Your comment went to spam; no idea why. So sorry!) The Berry essay was just an excuse to write about myself, really 😉 For years I’d meant to pitch an essay about why I didn’t own a smartphone. Of course, I missed my chance. I’ve read from his fiction and poetry but his nonfiction speaks to me the most.
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That’s what I first read as well, his NF. I can’t recall what, now, and that was back when logging felt optional so I missed as much as I logged, but I spun off something in Small Is Beautiful (Schumacher) and landed in Berry.
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Interesting reading! I had a home computer very early on, ZX80, as I was just the right age (aged 8 in 1980). I learned to program and to type in programs from magazines, which stood me in very good stead for my current transcription work! So I’ve always had a computer, and the internet from the early 90s, but I have been a late adopter on other stuff – now married to someone so early-adopter he’s more bleeding edge (everything he buys he has to fiddle with to get it to work, argh!!). I buy lesser brand phones on Sim-only contracts, and make sure I get ones that have years of security updates on them – I do replace them when they run out of security updates although I use them for a few years as a running phone to take photos and send my location back home. We use a reputable company for recycling electronics. I still have records, tapes and CDs and a unit to play all of them on, and we realised a while ago I missed a whole music technology twice: mini discs and whatever we call iPods, because I was still on whatever the previous version was!
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So you have the best of both worlds, as it were! It’s good to keep things going as long as possible and then, yes, recycle them responsibly. I don’t think I knew about the security update issue. We are devoted CD listeners but I have gotten rid of my cassettes and wouldn’t have a way to play one. I loved my iPod when I worked in a library. It made shelving bearable.
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Because Matthew’s a tech guy he’s big on the security stuff and I have quite a lot of sensitive files flying around on my email so it makes sense. My current phone should last 4 or 5 years though.
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