Fire and Knowledge

‘Style’ Gets New Elements

Wait, start from the beginning… why does a book on typographic style need illustrations? Even better, how does it help or make the book better? I’ll answer it for them: it doesn’t need illustrations, and the illustrations do not help or make the book better or clearer. Was the question even asked?

But while “The Elements of Style” has never lacked fans or dutiful adherents, appreciation for this slim volume takes a turn toward the whimsical and even surreal this week, as the Penguin Press publishes the first illustrated edition, featuring artwork by Maira Kalman, and the young composer Nico Muhly offers a finely wrought “Elements of Style” song cycle, to be given its premiere tonight at 8 in a highly unusual, if oddly appropriate, concert setting: the Rose Main Reading Room of the New York Public Library.

Better Off: Flipping the Switch on Technology, by Eric Brende. HarperCollins (2004), 233 pages, $24.95 (hardcover).

What would it be like if a young couple left modern technological life for an 18 month experiment without electricity? In Better Off: Flipping the Switch on Technology, Eric Brende shares his story of living with the “Minimites” (a fictional name for a real community).

Mr. Brende—a former graduate of M.I.T.—gradually became disillusioned with the way technology has taken over all facets of our lives. We work long hours so we can pay for our transportation to our job, purchase groceries and obtain “time-saving” devices. However, these “time-saving” devices do not seem to actually give us any more time. We are still rushing, always too busy to talk to neighbors, pray, cook a meal from scratch, or settle down with a good book.

Better Off is written in the form of a very compelling story. I had a hard time putting it down. In the midst of enjoying the story, I learned some very interesting things. For instance, in winter some community members harvest ice out of ponds and lakes, and pack it into sheds with thick sawdust insulation. Surprisingly, it stays cold all summer and they can have ice cream in August. Indoor plumbing can be added through a “ram” that uses the movement of a stream or spring to pump water to a house. As a bonus, I also received a refresher course on the social impact of technological history.

This book is a living experiment of how technology affects society. What is a community like that has shared values, but no TVs, computers, recorded music, video games, or cars? The hypothesizing stops: we see a real picture. The children are helpful, loving, and kind. The neighbors bear one another’s burdens. Hard labor intersects with socialization that results in close relationships and enjoyment. Meals involve enjoying the fruit of your own labor. People become skilled and knowledgeable workers (not just players) again. Leisure time for reading and playing equals (or surpasses) our own. Modesty is the rule. Divorce is virtually non-existent.

Their community is not perfect, however. They tend to be cultish: they believe their church is the one-true denomination (Brende himself is a Catholic). Their self-government seems to lack structure and written law. Some community members think there is too much technology while others think there should be less.

Like any book, it is not without faults. It gives little detail on some things (How did they solve everyday medical problems? How did they bathe? What would happen during a community crop failure?). While Mr. Brende is a good writer, his prose sometimes spills over into language that a reader might find too extravagant for such a story, for instance:

It was as if the field were there to harvest us, not we it, the whole undertaking a pretext, a cosmic matchmaker’s ruse. At the stroke of midnight we shed our mortal shells and become prince and princess of creation, presiding over the majestic ball of life, ceremoniously joining with nature in jocund betrothal, a feast of love. (p. 173)

But those are small faults for an overall excellent book.

In the end, this book is more than an interesting story. It contains technological history, life lessons, and a personal journey wrapped up in a conservative, ecological philosophy of technology. It raises questions that beg the reader to give consideration to: how much technology is needed for human comfort and leisure? How can we use technologies that serve us, and avoid those that we serve? This book might help you find the answers to questions like that. You may even find an awakening of a desire you never knew existed—a desire “to live quietly, and to mind your own affairs, and to work with your hands … so that you may live properly before outsiders and be dependent on no one” (1 Thessalonians 4:11-12).

Joshua P. Sowin
Minneapolis, MN

Wired News is starting a new column called The Luddite. Sounds (reads?) like it will be interesting. Good to see some other perspectives in such a technology-centered magazine.

And that’s the reason for this column: to lend a contrarian perspective to a world besotted with technology and all its bright, glittery appeal. This is not, as some of my colleagues have characterized it, an “anti-technology” column. I’m not, strictly speaking, anti-technology. I just don’t treat it like a freaking religion. So this is a “perspective” column.

In case you’re wondering, this Luddite thing doesn’t compromise my effectiveness as an editor for what is often described as a “tech site.” On the contrary, a professional editor can edit anything. Besides, I like to think that my colleagues find my iconoclastic crankiness kind of endearing. If nothing else, it breaks up the monotony of all those clacking keyboards. I swear, sometimes it sounds like the pious fiddling with their prayer beads in here….

For one thing, human beings are not meant to go as fast as modern technology compels them to go. Technology might make it possible to work at warp speed, yes, but that doesn’t make it healthy. And just because the latest software makes it feasible to double your workload (or “productivity,” to you middle-management types), that shouldn’t give the boss the right to expect you will….

Anything that diminishes the value of a single human being poses a threat to a rational, humane society. When technology can cure a disease or help you with your homework or bring a little joy to a shut-in, that’s great. But when it costs you your job, or trashes the environment, or takes you out of the real world in favor of a virtual one, or drives your blood pressure through the roof, it’s a monster.

(via Question Technology)

Manual skills have not declined; they have been migrated from work to hobbies and sports.

—Edward Tenner, Our Own Devices: The Past and Future of Body Technology (2003), p. x

Up to 92 percent of families with babies have infant walkers, wheeled seats that let children move about before they can even crawl. Yet experiments have shown that infants using them sit and crawl one month after those who do not use them, beginning to walk two months later, and score lower in mental tests. The walkers are thought to restrict the ability to explore and interact with the infant’s environment. That is certainly consistent with the reports of many creative adults that locomotion promotes reflection. The writer Evan S. Connell once observed that great ideas come to people in transit, especially walking; Joyce Carol Oates has celebrated the stimulation of running and walking, citing Wordsworth, Coleridge, Thoreau, and Dickens.

—Edward Tenner, Our Own Devices: The Past and Future of Body Technology (2003), pp. 9-10

By the way, if you don’t already know, Gene Ed Veith is now blogging over at WorldMagBlog’s sub-blog “Cranach“.

Update 7/7/08: Updated URL.

One should, each day, try to hear a little song, read a good poem, see a fine picture, and, if possible, speak a few reasonable words.

—Goethe

Paper view technology

Just when you think the image-dominated magazine can’t get any worse:

Cheap, paper-thin TV screens that can be used in newspapers and magazines have been unveiled by German electronics giant Siemens.

The firm says the low production costs could see the magazine shelves in newsagents come alive with moving images vying for the customers’ attention as they move along the aisle….

“The technology makes it possible to put moving images directly onto paper … at a cost that would make it economical to use on everything from magazines to cigarette packets … where the moving images would give more detailed instructions than any photo could ever do,” he said.