Flipping the Switch on Technology (2004)

The author and his wife move to a community of conservative Amish or Mennonites that do not use motors. His goal is to see the effect on life when living without electricity. They have a car for a time but eventually sell it and buy a horse and buggy. He finds that this life style leads to more face-to-face interactions and support of each other. There is more time for leisure because technology needs time for maintenance and use. Using your body instead of labor saving devices is good exercise and is physically and emotionally rewarding. The author, a nominal Catholic, never seems to understand the scriptural reasons these people have for living in this lifestyle. ( )

Brende disappoints. There are two major problems with his work. The first is that he isn't a very good writer. His sentences are rambling and overwrought, and it is often hard to discern his meaning. He also uses the parenthesis until it dies. The second problem is that he is on a very full bandwagon. He goes "off the grid" for a year, laments the current state of society, and then returns to that same society having made only minor (as far as I can tell from the text) life changes and insisting that he is a better person. Everyone is doing these types of projects, and most authors are doing a better job at recounting their experiences. I think Brende tried to make a trite doctoral thesis into a best seller by tricking audiences into thinking his work hosted some sort of insight. In reality, this book is mostly a recounting of day-to-day events on a farm; this account is made even more miserable by poorly-written commentary on emotion, religion, and the meaning of life. If you are interested in the genre, I would recommend Thoreau and maybe even Colin Beavan's No Impact Man, which has the same context of a year-long experience with the addition of good writing and practical suggestions, as well as indications of a lasting life change. ( )

In "Better Off" the author explores what life would be like without all of the modern technological advancements we now take for granted. For 18 months, he and his newly wed wife live among the Mennonites, a group similar to the amish, but that utilize technology in their lives even less.The result of his 18 month experiment is this very engaging book that is difficult to put down. It serves both as an interesting glimpse into Mennonite culture and as a convincing, even persuasive, review of life without technology."Better Off" may not convince you that you can or should live your life with less technology, but it will certainly make you contemplate the possibility. ( )

I wrote this review with Kate Lawrence. A longer version of this review is on my web site, compassionatespirit.com. Better Off has a tantalizing premise. It is the answer to the question, "what would it be like to live without modern technology?" As a student at M. I. T., Eric Brende became a critic of modern technology. In response to a challenge by some of his college professors, he goes off for a year with his wife to an ultra-conservative, Amish-like Christian community which does not utilize electricity or modern machinery. They get rid of anything connected to "the grid" including electric stoves, phones, computers, automatic washing machines, and cars (for which they have "off-grid" equivalents). They grow their own food and trade labor and knowledge with others in the same community, affectionately called the "Minimites" (not their real name).Better Off is a well-written account of Eric, Mary, and their eighteen months in an off-grid community. It raises a whole host of important issues. I like this book as a description of how it would feel for a modern technologically-oriented person to be immersed in a voluntarily primitive group, and I can recommend it on that basis. It represents a truly creative approach to the whole question of our relationship to technology.However, there are a number of problems with the book. Some of these are connected with the way the book was written, others are connected with how Brende elaborates on his ideas. Our criticisms may seem to imply that we really don't think the book is worth reading, which is emphatically not the case. It's a thought-provoking book, and we're responding with our own thoughts. These problems are: (1) confusion about the lessons to be drawn from the book, (2) no elaboration on the question of birth control, despite its central place in the narrative of the book, (3) relative absence of women from the story, (4) lack of awareness of the "factory farming" issue, and (5) confusion over the impact of one critically important technology, that of cars, on human relationships.So far as we're concerned, even without a car, and especially without a car, we are still miles distant from the nearest natural food store and most of our friends. We have to get into a car to do practically anything — something which wasn’t true a century ago. Our entire lives seem to revolve around the car and its needs. By comparison, the impact of washing machines, computers, and running water on our neighborhoods has been minimal. The one piece of technology most devastating to our social environment is the one piece of technology which, in the end, Eric and Mary have not been able to leave behind.In short, Better Off is an stimulating book because of its description of radical off-grid living. But in terms of presenting solutions, it doesn’t leave us with much — and at least some of what it appears to offer is, in our opinion, dead wrong. In terms of "getting rid of technology," we’d like to see thoughtful people focus on getting rid of the two most destructive aspects of twentieth century technology: our car culture and factory-farmed meat. We can keep the birth control and automatic washing machines, thank you very much. ( )

Some parts really made me want to turn off the lights and get back to basics, but a lot of it read like a thesis with too many big words. It's an interesting concept and really makes you think about things beyond technology. ( )