c0wb0yz Lives !
Their choice of minimal technology adoption is a choice — but a choice enabled by the technium. Their lifestyle is within the technium, not outside it. As I encourage new technologies I am working for the Amish, and Leon, and the minimite homesteaders. So is anyone who is inventing, discovering, and expanding possibilities. In our ceaseless collective generation of new technologies, we technology boosters can invent more appropriate tools for minimalism, even though they are not doing that for us. Nonetheless, the Amish and minimites have something important to teach us about selecting what we embrace. I don’t want a lot of devices that add maintenance chores to my life without adding real benefits. I do want to be slow to embrace technology that I can back out of. I don’t want stuff that closes off options to others (like weapons). And I do want the minimum because I’ve learned that I have limited time or attention. I think I can put it this way: What we are seeking is the minimum amount of technology that will generate the maximum number of options for all.

“Why Technology Can’t Fulfill” par Kevin Kelly sur The Technium (June 26th, 2009)

Kevin Kelly ne partage pas du tout le rapport des Amish à la technologie comme on peut s’en apercevoir un peu plus loin dans le même article :

We expand technology to find out who we are. The Amish find incredible contentment in their enactment of a fixed human nature. This deep human contentment is real, visceral, renewable, and so attractive that Amish numbers are doubling every generation. But I believe the Amish and minimites have not, and can not, really discover who they are. They trade discovery for contentment. In their deliberate constraint of technology they optimize an alluring combination of leisure, comfort, and certainty over the optimization of uncertain possibilities - which is what the technium optimizes.

… mais, alors qu’il aurait été si facile de les ridiculiser, il prend non seulement soin de les comprendre, mais aussi de tirer les leçons de leur technophobie pour vivre plus sagement sa technophilie. Une belle marque d’intelligence.