Are the Amish right about new

technology?
The Amish stance toward any invention isn’t that they reject it outright. It’s that they
start by assuming they don’t need it, then adopt it only if it’s in line with their values

Fri 3 Nov 2017 11.00 EDTLast modified on Tue 19 Jun

2018 07.33 EDT

Illustration: Michele Marconi for the Guardian

The basic stereotype about the Amish –

drivers of horse-drawn buggies, wearers of
huge beards – is that they’re stuck in the
18th century: if a technology wasn’t
invented by then, you won’t find them using
it today. (What goes clip clop, clip clop,
bang bang, clip clop? An Amish drive-by shooting.) So it’s alarming to learn, as the New
York Times reported recently, that smartphones, PCs and computer-controlled
machinery are increasingly part of the community’s daily life. There are Amish bakeries
that take credit cards. So much for your fantasy – OK, my fantasy – of escaping the
hyper-connected world and retreating to a simpler era. If clicking and swiping have got
even the Amish addicted, what hope for the rest of us?

Except, as Kevin Kelly points out in his book What Technology Wants, the Amish have
never been unequivocal shunners of modernity. “Amish lives are anything but anti-
technological,” he writes. Visiting Amish communities, he found battery-powered
radios, computer-controlled milling machines, solar panels, chemical fertilisers and GM
crops. What distinguishes the Amish stance toward any given invention isn’t that they
reject it outright; it’s that they start by assuming they don’t want or need it, then adopt it
only if they decide it’s in line with their values.

Generally, these days, “our default is set to say ‘yes’ to new things,” Kelly notes, whereas
for the Amish “the default is set to ‘no’”. Thus cars don’t make the cut, because they
encourage people to wander far away, instead of building community close to home. But
laptops and smartphones are fine, for some Amish, in certain workplace contexts –
though never at home – because the benefits are deemed to outweigh the downsides.

I’m not going to argue that we should adopt Amish values, which are largely illiberal, let
alone copy their system for determining which technologies are allowed, which
essentially means doing whatever the bishops decide. But I agree with Cal Newport, who
highlighted Kelly’s work on his blog the other day: isn’t it alarming that the basic Amish
logic – adopt a new technology only if it helps you do what you deem important – feels
so alien to us? “The Amish are clear about what they value,” he writes, “and new
technologies are evaluated by their impact on these values.”

It’s not rocket science. (I’m not sure where the Amish stand on rocket science.) Yet most
of us are deeply enmeshed in the opposite: we end up gradually adopting new things
simply because they’re there.

To implement Newport’s philosophy, you might take an inventory of the tech you use
and evaluate each item for its real usefulness, working on the assumption that if
something can’t justify itself, it’s out. I’ve started that process: I left a bunch of social
networks I was barely on, and deleted all but 30 (!) apps from my phone, including
email. (I almost never replied via phone anyway.) Yes, it’s only a start. On the other
hand, I don’t own a car, so I’m already Amish-ish in that respect. Time to start shopping
for a horse and cart.

oliver.burkeman@theguardian.com