Lessons From the Amish

Having grown up near Pennsylvania Dutch country, I know surprisingly little about the Amish. The extent of my knowledge includes only the great variety of delicious deserts they make. So, I have to take the word of Kevin Kelly, who has spent much time with the Amish, in order to understand their approach to technology.

According to Kelly's research, there are very few examples of any cultures prohibiting the use of technology. Of course, many people decide not to drive, watch TV, or pay for data plans, but it's not often that we as a nation, culture, or society say 'No' to technology. The Amish, however, do this all the time.

Amish love their scooters

I had always thought that the Amish were anti-technology and lived in an unchanging world. In fact, they are obsessed with technology. Early adopters try out new technologies and the community sees what happens. Right now, for example, they're experimenting with solar power and cell phones. Standard land-line phones are typically housed in shacks far away from homes. Cell phones will likely be limited to areas outside the home, such as vans, if they are adopted.

That's right--the Amish use electricity, automobiles, refrigeration, genetically modified crops, and many other modern conveniences. But they use them in their own, deliberate ways. Kelly notes that:

• They are selective.
• They evaluate new things by experience instead of by theory.
• They have criteria by which to make choices.
• The choices are not individual but communal.

What is the problem that the Amish have found with many new technologies? They disrupt the strong familial and communal life that they cherish. These values are so important that the Amish make sure everyone who is a part of the community wants to be there--young adults are free to live like non-Amish for a few years during a period they call Rumspringa before they freely choose to be Amish.

Amish solar paneling--look carefully

For us non-Amish, it is very difficult to make choices about technology for society at large, since it is not clear what criteria we all share. Even individually, it is hard to resist the push of smartphones, automobiles, or running shoes.

Even if we agree on what we want from technology (a pretty big 'if' in today's political climate), it's very hard to know what a technology really is until is has gained widespread adoption. Edison only considered the phonograph as a vehicle for music as an afterthought. Ford couldn't have imagined the drive-through's, cruisin' music, or urban sprawl made possible by automobiles. These 'second-order' effects happen because technologies are constantly being adapted for new uses and being combined with other technologies. For this reason, it's impossible to decide that a technology is bad a priori.

Based on the principles of Amish experimentation, Kelly suggests that we adopt the following goals:

• Anticipation
• Continual assessment
• Prioritization of risks, including natural ones
• Rapid correction of harm
• Redirection, not prohibition

These are still a tall order, but they're more reasonable than trying to achieve Amish-like levels of consensus. The principles are the same: open discussion, experimentation, observation, and risk-assessment.  Let's try it out and then talk about it.

A Parliament of Things

Technology is a scene of social struggle, a parliament of things on which civilizational alternatives contend.
--Andrew Feenberg

In the wake of CES, I've had a lot of conversations that go something like, "Have you seen the new X? It can do A, B, and C!"  Proponents list off the functionality that X can do, and haters point out what it cannot do (D, E, and F, which Y does). The conversation centers around a particular gadget and its abilities. Rarely does it enter into the sphere of what X should do.

When you start talking about possibility (should) rather than actuality (is), you quickly slide into the realm of philosophy. Many technophiles avoid philosophy due to a faith that technology will solve all problems--we just need more of it. Ignoring philosophy might seem to be the more realistic and safer thing to do. Socrates was, after all, condemned to death.

An early blog post

But this so-called 'realistic' viewpoint actually ignores how technology happens, and in two ways, according to Andrew Feenberg, a professor of philosophy at Simon Fraser University. First, technologies developed for one purpose are often used to do other things. That is, their meaning is socially determined. It's not hard to find examples of this. The architects of the Internet could never have guessed in the 60's what it would look like today. It's to their credit that their design could be repurposed in many ways, from lolcats to the Arab Spring. Similarly, Johannes Gutenberg, who simply wanted to spread the word of the bible with his invention of movable type, could not have dreamed of the social upheavals--including the Reformation and the French and American revolutions--made possible by the new printing press.

Second, people determine what technologies should be developed. Feenberg calls this the cultural horizon of technology. There is nothing inevitable about the course technology takes. If many technologies are developed to kill and exploit people--whether the atomic bomb or the ludicrously expensive F-35--that's because a small group of people and interests tend to decide what is researchable. If many technologies are developed to automate repetitive tasks, that is because of the price that we, as a society, put on efficiency. Hence the continuing importance of IT departments and the automation of manufacturing.

There are thus two ways that societies shape technology: in what gets researched and developed (their cultural horizon), and in how technologies are put to use (their social meaning). Both sides constitute the 'parliament of things', as Feenberg calls it (note: this is not the same as Latour's use of the same term). If we don't like our current technologies, we need to democratize the funding of research and have conversations about what kinds of technology we want. Funding for technology research typically occurs in two ways: through markets and through the government. Both are controlled by our votes, both literal and metaphorical. We also need to talk about the uses to which technologies are put, such as by enforcing norms or changing social practices.

$1 trillion for a plane

If this all sounds a bit idealistic, consider a couple of examples of the democratizing of technology. Feenberg notes that many regulations which were bitterly fought eventually came to be seen as obvious, including child labor laws in turn of the century America. It was argued that the inefficiencies labor laws would introduce in the labor system would be prohibitively costly, yet it's hard to imagine what the 20th century would have looked like without them.

And, of course, the government is not the only tool we can use to change the course of technology. In the last ten years, journalism has raised awareness about 'cyberbullying', so that parents can talk to their children and teachers to their students about appropriate uses of social media. Social media can be regulated by governments, as in the case of recent changes to privacy law, but they can also be monitored by societies themselves.

So, what do you want technology to do for you?

Links
-Andrew Feenberg's Ten Paradoxes of Technology