Better Off : Flipping the Switch on Technology

Rating:
Summary: Better Off: Well Read
Review: "It's good."

That's the answer to the question anyone reading "Customer Reviews" is asking. Eric Brende's surprisingly eloquent writing style (for a masters graduate from MIT) is the perfect vessel for a story all about minimalism. He manages to pick out the fun, amusing, telling anecdotes, and minimizes on the monotonous journal style writing, you get a good sense of the work performed and inconveniences encountered. You also get the chance to either be amazed at his willingness to learn/experiment, or at his utter lack of useful base knowledge (depending on the amount that you have). I do, however, recommend that if your vocabulary isn't top notch, you keep a dictionary handy, Brende occasionally interjects entertaining, extremely descriptive, if somewhat obscure, words into his narrative.

As a piece of research (which I don't believe Better Off: Flipping the Switch on Technology is even trying to masquerade as) it is trash. As a literary account of a research project in minimalism, its quite well done. It's not Walden Pond because, unlike Thoreau, Eric Brende and his wife, Mary, actually do work, and participate in the community.

The ending, though rushed, does a decent job in tying up the loose ends, but perhaps creates a few too many questions.


As for the review entitled "Let them eat cake" by Noman "0000," it is quite apparent that the reviewer didn't read past chapter 2, or perhaps past chapter 1. The Brendes are self-sufficient. They *do* work, they're not just in a minimalist community watching the members work on their farms from their porch, they're living the life-style. As for "Blue Monday" it was mostly called "blue monday" due to bluing which is a dye, a *blue* dye which would leave people, quite literally, blue (that would be looking like a Smurf, for those of you not following). (note: the Brendes do their laundry without electricity)

Pick it up, it's worth a read if you're looking to simplify or if, like me, you're a technophile and want to see the other side. If you're an engineer of any sort, especially a software engineer, you need to have this book, and take heed: making technology to make life better only works if you do it right.

Rating:
Summary: An engaging exploration into the low watt life
Review: An enjoyable read, and fascinating to see how a small community deals with the ebb and flow of seasonal farm work and food needs without using technology or imported labor (though a fair amount of child labor is used!). Whaqt I found most intersting, however, was the last couple of chapters on what they did after they left the community and found a low tech life in this high tech world. The balance they ended up with sounded compelling and an interesting take on taking the best of both worlds to make a more meaningful and connected life.

I also think "00000" didn't read far into the book - while it is a luxury to be able to chose to downscale the degree of technology in ones life, it is also hard to chose to do without many of the things we take for granted. I don't think they were calling for a return to the pre-industrial age by any means, merely suggesting we make a more considered choice about which fruits of the industrial age we consume.

Definitely worth a read.

Rating:
Summary: Sell your car and bike to work
Review: And while your at it you should unplug your computer and read this book instead. What a great find this is, its adventure with bits of philosophy, I like to think its akin to a modern day Walden Pond. I thought this book was excellently written and concieved. My one grouse; the author's writing hit the fast forward button towards the end. I believe the book was originally a series of articles...and the author tried to wrap up the whole story in a 2 chapter burst of speed covering about a 10 year span. It hurt the books over all rhythm...if books can have such a thing.

The book's concept is about asking ourselves some simple questions: Does technology really improve our quality of life? Do all our gadjets and gizmos really help us save "time"? Do they make our lives easier, and more enjoyable?

Or have you caught yourself cursing up a storm when your computer crashed at work with a virus...losing time, causing aggravation, and creating stress? How about trying to tangle and untangle that mess of wires behind your entertainment system every time you buy another stereo component? In an age where computers, DVD and MP3 players, the internet, stereos, TV's, radios, gas polluting cars, movers, chainsaws,weedeaters and the like take up our space, eat our bankrolls, and whine for constant maintenance, its not surprising when we complain about not having the time to fit it all in. We've done it to ourselves, and Eric Brende very eloquently explains this to us in his "experiment".

And that's where the book takes us...on the slow and beautiful journey of a newlywed couple and their trials and tribulations in living a farming existense. One without power tools and electricity. They do it all by hand, wash clothes, grow food, and live life....and guess what? The answers to our questions become sparkling clear. Technology is best left to a minimum....or so the author will have his readers believe. And I've got to say, after reading this I've been convinced. I sold my gas powered lawnmower in the paper the following week and bought that self propelled hard work version (the one I talked myself out of buying a year ago).

With that said, Brende is not preachy. He's just pointing out that there is another way to live life. And perhaps a simpler lifestyle has certain advantages we have lost sight of. However in reality there's alot of peer pressure to raise your children, and families in "modern" environments. I'm an architect, and technology dominates my existence. And so this book, from my perspective, is about pointing out a potential fork in life's road....Brende and family has taken the path less traveled...will you?

Rating:
Summary: The True Husbandman
Review: Better Off: Flipping the Switch on Technology is the story of how a young man and his wife embark upon a journey that at heart is straight out of Thoreau's Walden. Ostensibly, Mr. and Mrs. Brende are seeking a refuge, however temporary, from modernity. What they in fact are doing is more serious: they report back, they are sending us their findings--which is what Thoreau understood Emerson to be saying in his essay on "Self-Reliance": Leave the hurly-burly behind. Clear your head. Come back and tell us what the air is like. Life among the "Minimites" is Brende's addendum to what is by now something of a long-standing tradition (Letters From an American Farmer; Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance; On the Road) in American Literature.

The idea that anyone today might have reservations about our over-reliance on technology is not itself new; others have been down this road before. But rarely has it been done with such grace and sensitivity. The story begins at MIT, where our narrator (Brende), while working toward his Ph.D., is trying to come to grips with a burgeoning realization that the indiscriminate use of technology exacts a price, and that for some people, that price--a dilution of what might be called the 'joy' we humans can feel when we work with our hands--is indeed a steep price to pay. In Better Off, Brende demonstrates, by putting the gloves on and doing the work himself (under the watchful and often wry eyes of his 'Minimite' friends and neighbors), that we have more control over the technological choices we make in life than most of us ever come to understand, and that there are things we can do to regain some of those old feelings we have lost at the hands of machines.

Better Off is exceedingly well-written. Brende has a flair for understatement, and an utterly keen eye for the telling detail and the delightful anecdote. My copy of the book is littered with yellow post-its. I came away from the book with the unalterable sense that I knew these people, these 'Minimites' (especially the Millers). Important to note, too, is that Better Off is not an anti-technological screed. Most of the people Brende lived among depended upon some use of technology: what they tended to do was to use the minimum necessary to accomplish a given task. Tasks! Ends and means! Who talks about these things anymore?

By and large, all the characters in the book are trying to lead a balanced existence, and they accomplish this by respecting the power of machinery, and by not letting go of what it is in our physical nature that cries out for some good hard work. And no one works alone. The Minimites, like their 19th-century utopian counterparts, work together: "many hands make work light." Community! There's another of those forgotten words. As Brende says, and it's a good notion to get hold of: "there is no end to the possible uses of technology...but in all cases it (technology) must serve our needs, not the reverse." Philosophically speaking, that's what his book is about, hammering that idea into some kind of usable shape. On a moral level, however--and maybe this is more vital--Better Off is a how-to book on the importance of living deliberately.

Rating:
Summary: Would like to hear more about the wife's point of view
Review: I agree with the previous reviewers in the sense that this is a fascinating and highly readable account of a young couple who decide to try "living off the grid" for 18 months. However, I would have liked it better if the wife (Mary) had been allowed to give her own input. Everything we know about the experience, and Mary's reaction to it, has been written by her husband who, I got the impression, was more gung-ho about the whole thing than she.

There were some parts of the book where I developed an actual dislike for the author, or at least for his actions. At one point he screams (his own term) at Mary for not having dinner on the table when he returns from the fields, and her meek reply makes me wonder if she freely chose to participate in this experiment or if she was coerced (or bullied) into it by her stronger-willed husband. I also disliked his blythe dismissal of pre-natal care for her prior to the birth of their first child (he seems to imply that life-threatening complications only occur in unhealthy women). He also says that they "decided" not to use any unnatural "gizmos" for birth control, and that they have thereby managed to space their subsequent children by 2.5 year intervals. Considering their age, Mary could easily have 10 kids by the time she reaches menopause, but he doesn't discuss the implications of this for her (who is responsible for home-schooling the children in addition to her numerous other household duties).

He also takes a rather patronizing tone towards Mary when he mentions how she often comes home very late in the evening because she "gabs" so much (it doesn't seem to occur to him that maybe his wife needs to get away from their three small children for a time). And the part where they go to K-mart to buy baby supplies and he expects her to pay for everything on her credit card because baby things are the wife's responsibility - huh? I also didn't care for his dismissive attitude towards "The Feminist Mystique" - he seems to think that Betty Friedan and her like would have been fine if they had simply been given a few acres of fields of plow and weed. These parts of the book (and several others) are sure to enrage any feminist, as they did me.

I notice that the jacket-cover blurb about the author tells you a lot about his numerous ivy-league academic accomplishments, but says absolutley nothing whatever about his wife's. In fact, Mary seems to be treated as a person of secondary interest throughout the book, instead of being the true partner that she assuredly must be.

All in all, I think the author paints an overly-rosy (though certainly interesting) picture of their experiment, but I suspect his wife, if given the chance, would write a very different account.

Rating:
Summary: Not the Depth I was Hoping for
Review: If you're considering purchasing this book, keep in mind, it's quite brief. I would have liked more depth and detail with regards to the physical challenges of his 18 months with the "Minimites". I was reading this book in the hopes of actually learning something about living a low-tech lifestyle, but Eric chose to focus more on the emotional impact the lifestyle had on himself and his wife, and he spent a large part of the story giving brief portrayals of his neighbors in the community.

What Eric does provide is certainly not bad. I enjoyed the diversity of the neighborhood around him, and I did like the basic theme of the book - when people are brought together under the auspices of labor, a true sense of community is obtained and the work itself is all but forgotten. I just didn't feel that this short read (a very fast reading 256 pages) provided the depth I was looking for.

Rating:
Summary: Don't pass this one by...
Review: If you're wondering what to read next, wondering what will be a tremendous read crafted by a master wordsmith and storyteller, you'll want to put this book at the top of your list! Eric and Mary Brende's 18-month venture into a technology-free environment among a community of what he calls Minimite farmers is riveting! I'm obviously not a writer, but I do love a good read: I could hardly put down the book as Eric describes his and Mary's adaptation to a life without electricity or running water to one of plowing behind a horse, and carrying water to the house, by two city-born and -bred college graduates. A degree never prepared them for escaping an angry bull on foot or learning from a farmer's young son how to plow. Through it all, Eric maintains a sense of humor, and humility, finding a place within the community as he proves himself willing to dig in and perform very difficult chores, gaining a place for himself a kinship among the men who bond through working together in barn raisings and wheat threshing. I think they respected his not giving in, his determination to do the job and to do it right.

I stopped several times, thinking, "Oh, I wish I had written (could write) that sentence, that paragraph!" He does with language what we would all love to. Well, I don't have that gift, but I can appreciate the best when I read them, and this is the best. Have a wonderful read!

Rating:
Summary: Best book I've read this year
Review: Other reviewers have summarized this book so I'll just make a few comments.

This book really draws you in and lets you share the life they live without technology. He minimizes discussions of theology, for which I was thankful. I am hoping to change my life in ways that will give me more time and mastery over my life rather than my modern life which in some ways has mastery over me. I love books which present an alternative way of living- I can learn from their mistakes and also pick out the best parts to put together to make a new life.

I also wanted to mention that I did not get the anti-woman impression that the other feminist reviewer did. I don't know that I call myself a feminist but I certainly am a woman who identifies with many of their beliefs. As far as I could tell he treated his wife with respect and I think that showed in the telling of the story. He made if clear that this adventure was something that he wanted more than she did, and that after the 18 months were over it would be her choice what to do next. When he mentioned Mary gabbing with the neighbors, he mentioned that he did too. In the previous paragraph for example, he had mentioned that he spent a half-hour every time he made a photocopy because he had to catch up on the news in town. In the section on childbirth, he just tries to balance the dangers of home birth (they had three midwives plus a doctor stopped by) with the dangers of hospital births (hospital infections, 1 out of 3 births in boston hospitals is by cesarean).

In summary, it's a wonderful book if you like books which let you explore someone else's life. If you are overwhelmed by how much you pay (in time and money) for technologies like car upkeep and power tools, you might even learn a thing or two.

Rating:
Summary: Very good but left me wanting more
Review: The author's quest was to study "how much-or how little-technology [is] needed" ("not to rid the world of technology"). If you wish you had time to get to know people better and want to slow the passage of your life, you'll find the low tech life he describes appealing. I enjoyed his observations about many hands making the work light, work as a social elixir, work freeing the mind, and more.

Unfortunately, the author seems interested only in farming and transportation technology. He discusses communication by telephone but not the Internet and does not say how or if they got news. The only household technology discussed is the problem his wife has making him three meals a day exactly when he expects them because of a lack of refrigeration. (I started thinking of her as "Poor Mary" because of the way he introduces her: she was a woman he had taken "on a couple of casual dates" that he decided to call "in desperation" to come do his cooking when he was on crutches for a few days. He is never any more complimentary than that.) They apparently accepted the division of labor between men and women without question, so he probably had little idea of the adaptations she had to make. As unromantic as he seems, for some reason he keeps talking about their love life, which has absolutely nothing to do with the topic of the book.

I finished the book a couple of days ago, and I'm still thinking about it. How can they and will they live without health insurance, vehicle insurance, and Social Security? Does he realize what he's missing by not using the Internet? Mostly, I find myself evaluating every item I use and asking myself if I could replace it with a lower tech one.


Rating:
Summary: Let them eat cake!
Review: Yet another example of someone (who, like a certain French Queen who liked to play "milkmaid" with custom china milk pails) has NO idea what "labor" is. And don't forget, that back in the "good ol' days" with lots of labor and few machines, the average person could only afford two suits of clothes a year and never traveled further than 30 miles from home. What a whiny, self-indulgent pin-head. The author should spend 18 months in the Sudan or Mongolia or any of hundreds of countries that have no labor saving devices and let the family he replaces deal with the 'hardships' he's fled. Yet another overfed, overbred idiot spouts nonsense.
For example, he talks about a seamless whole (meaning the family) and gripes about 'going to the gym' after work or having to round up the kids for 'quality time'. He should have read Dickens. The only quality time workers in the 19th century had with their children was if they worked the same shift in the coal mine. Go further back in time? Lots of free time trying to grow a crop in Tang China or raise a herd in Mongolia. (note that the Chinese spent a lot of time developing those nasty labor saving machines, esp. for agriculture. What could they have been thinking? They could have been spending 'quality time' with their children. As they all slowl starved to death) Until very recently children (and women) were an expendable resource for rich and poor. Oh yeah, and how about trying to wash clothes w/o a modern washing machine? they used to call washday "Blue Monday" for a reason. Try cleaning a carpet w/o a vacuum cleaner. Women had *lots* of free time for the children w/o technology. Wooops . . .but the kids are out working the fields, or down in the mine about as soon as they can walk. Oh well, she can spend some quality time with them as they die of black lung, gangrene, or a heart attack from overwork.

What a moron! They only reason he could indulge himself in this nonsense is because the world he lives in heavily tech and can support such self indulgent nitwits.

What this idiot seems to overlook (perhaps because using a little logic would spoil his book?) is that technology give him a *CHOICE*!!! He chose to indulge himself playing at being a 'nobel savage'. Other people can choose to do the same ONLY because the tech he despises FREES up enough labor to make it possible! The automobile gives FREEDOM to tens of thousands of women and the elderly who otherwise would be trapped at home. (It takes a lot of time and muscle to harness a rig or even saddle a horse. And a horse can't simply be garaged when not in use. Oh, wait. spend quailty time with the kids taking care of the horse(s). When they get back from the fields/mines. Learning to read and write is over rated anyway)

Read it at the library. Interlibrary loan if you must. Do NOT pay for this tripe. You'll only incourage him.

BOOK, Not worth it at *any* price.