43
Why I Am not Going
To
Buy A Computer
Wendell
Berry
Like almost everybody else, I am hooked to the
energy corporations, which I do not admire. I hope
to become less hooked to them. In
my
work, I try
to be
as
little hooked to them
as
possible.
As
a
farmer, I do almost all
of
my work with horses.
As
a writer, I work with a pencil
or
a pen and a
piece
of
paper.
My wife types my work
on
a Royal standard
typewriter bought new in 1956 and
as
good now
as
it was then.
As
she types, she sees things that
are wrong and marks them with small checks in
the margins. She
is
my best critic because she
is
the one most familiar with my habitual errors and
weaknesses. She also understands, sometimes
better
than
I do, what ought to be said. We have,
I think, a literary cottage industry that works
well and pleasantly. I do
not
see anything wrong
with it.
A number
of
people, by now, have told
me
that I could greatly improve things by buying
a computer. My answer
is
that I am not going
to do it. I have several reasons,
and
they are
good ones.
The first
is
the one I mentioned at the begin-
ning. I would hate to think that
my
work
as
a writer could
not
be done without a direct
dependence on strip-mined coal.
How
could I
write conscientiously against the rape
of
nature
if I were, in the act
of
writing, implicated in
the rape? For the same reason, it matters to me
that my writing
is
done in the daytime, without
electric light.
I do not admire the computer manufac-
turers a great deal more
than
I admire the energy
industries. I have seen their advertisements,
attempting to seduce struggling
or
failing farm-
ers into the belief that they can solve their prob-
lems by buying yet another piece
of
expensive
equipment. I
am
familiar with their propaganda
campaigns that have
put
computers into public
schools in need
of
books. That computers are
expected to become
as
common
as
TV sets in "the
future"
does
not
impress me
or
matter to me.
I do
not
own a TV set. I do not see that com-
puters are bringing us one step nearer to any-
thing that does matter to me: peace, economic
justice, ecological health, political honesty, family
and community stability, good work.
What would a computer cost me? More
money, for one thing,
than
I can afford, and
more than I wish to pay to people whom I do not
admire. But the cost would
not
be just mone-
tary.
It
is
well understood that technological
innovation always requires the discarding
of
the "old model" - the "old model" in this case
being
not
just
our
old Royal standard,
but
my
wife, my critic, my closest reader, my fellow
worker. Thus (and I think this
is
typical
of
From Wendell Berty,
What
are People
For?
(New York:
North
Point Press, 2000), pp. 171-7.
WHY
I
AM
NOT
GOING
TO
BUY
A
COMPUTER
501
present-day technological innovation), what would
be
superseded would be
not
only something,
but
somebody. In order to be technologically up-to-
date
as
a writer, I would have to sacrifice an
association that I
am
dependent
upon
and that I
treasure.
My final and perhaps my best reason for not
owning a computer
is
that I do
not
wish to
fool myself. I disbelieve, and therefore strongly
resent, the assertion that I
or
anybody
else
could
write better
or
more easily with a computer than
with a pencil. I
do
not see why I should
not
be
as
scientific about this
as
the next fellow: when
somebody has used a computer to write work that
is
demonstrably better than Dante's, and when this
better
is
demonstrably attributable to the use
of
a computer, then I will speak
of
computers with
a more respectful tone
of
voice, though I still will
not buy one.
To make myself
as
plain
as
I can, I should give
my standards for technological innovation in my
own work. They are
as
follows:
The new tool should
be
cheaper
than
the one
it replaces.
2
It
should be at least
as
small in scale
as
the
one it replaces.
3
It
should do work that
is
clearly and demon-
strably better than the one it replaces.
4
It
should use
less
energy
than
the one it
replaces.
5
If
possible, it should use some form
of
solar
energy, such as that
of
the body.
6
It
should be repairable by a person
of
ordi-
nary intelligence, provided
that
he
or
she has
the necessary tools.
7
It
should
be
purchasable and repairable
as
near
to home
as
possible.
S
It
should come from a small, privately
owned shop
or
store
that
will take it back for
maintenance and repair.
9
It
should
not
replace
or
disrupt anything
good that already exists, and this includes
family and community relationships.
1987
After the foregoing essay, first published in the
New England Review and Bread Loaf Quarterly,
was reprinted
in
Halper's, the Harper's editors
published the following letters in response and
permitted me a reply. w.
B.
Letters
Wendell Berry provides writers enslaved by the
computer with a handy alternative: Wife - a
low-tech energy-saving device. Drop a pile
of
handwritten notes
on
Wife and you get back a
finished manuscript, edited while it was typed.
What computer can do that? Wife meets all
of
Berry's uncompromising standards for techno-
logical innovation: she's cheap, repairable near
home, and good for the family structure. Best
of
all, Wife
is
politically correct because she breaks
a writer's
"direct dependence on strip-mined
coal."
History teaches
us
that Wife can also be used
to beat rugs and wash clothes by hand, thus
eliminating the need for the vacuum cleaner and
washing machine, two more nasty machines that
threaten the act
of
writing.
Gordon
Inkeles
Miranda, Calif.
I have
no
quarrel with Berry because he prefers
to write with pencil
and
paper; that
is
his choice.
But he implies that I and others are somehow
impure because
we
choose to write on a computer.
I do
not
admire the energy corporations, either.
Their shortcoming
is
not
that they produce elec-
tricity
but
how they
go
about it. They are poorly
managed because they are blind to long-term
consequences. To solve this problem, wouldn't it
make more sense to correct the precise error
they are making rather than simply ignore their
product? I would be happy to join Berry in a
protest against strip mining,
but
I intend to keep
plugging this computer into the wall with a clear
conscience.
James
Rhoads
Battle Creek, Mich.
enjoyed reading Berry's declaration
of
intent
never to buy a personal computer in the same way
that I enjoy reading about the belief systems
of
unfamiliar tribal cultures. I tried to imagine a tool
that would meet Berry's criteria for superiority
to his old manual typewriter. The clear winner
is
the quill pen.
It
is
cheaper, smaller, more energy-
efficient, human-powered, easily repaired, and
non-disruptive
of
existing relationships.
Berry also requires that this tool must be
"clearly and demonstrably better"
than
the one
502
WENDELL
BERRY
it replaces. But surely we all recognize by
now
that "better"
is
in the
mind
of
the beholder. To
the quill pen aficionado, the benefits obtained
from elegant calligraphy might well outweigh all
others.
I have no particular desire to see Berry use
a word processor;
if
he doesn't like computers,
that's fine with me. However, I do object to his
portrayal
of
this reluctance as a moral virtue.
Many
of
us have found that computers can be
an invaluable tool
in
the fight to protect
our
environment. In addition to helping me write,
my personal computer gives me access to up-
to-the-minute reports
on
the workings
of
the
EPA
and the nuclear industry. I participate in elec-
tronic bulletin boards
on
which environmental
activists discuss strategy and warn each other
about urgent legislative issues.
Perhaps Berry
feels
that the Sierra Club should eschew modern
printing technology, which
is
highly wasteful
of
energy, in favor
of
having its members hand-
copy the club's magazines and other mailings
each month?
Nathaniel
S.
Borenstein
Pittsburgh, Pa.
The value
of
a computer to a writer
is
that it
is
a
tool
not
for generating ideas
but
for typing and
editing words.
It
is
cheaper
than
a secretary (or
a wife!) and arguably more fuel-efficient. And it
enables spouses who are
not
inclined to provide
free labor more time to concentrate
on
their own
work.
We should support alternatives
both
to coal-
generated electricity and to IBM-style technocracy.
But I am reluctant to entertain alternatives that
presuppose the traditional subservience
of
one
class
to another. Let the PCs come and the wives and
servants
go
seek more meaningful work.
Toby
Koosman
Knoxville, Tenn.
Berry asks
how
he could write conscientiously
against the rape
of
nature
if
in the act
of
writing
on a computer he was implicated in the rape. I
find it ironic that a writer who sees the under-
lying connectedness
of
things would allow his
diatribe against computers to be published in
a magazine that carries ads for the National
Rural Electric Cooperative Association, Marlboro,
Phillips Petroleum, McDonnell Douglas, and yes,
even Smith-Corona.
If
Berry rests comfortably at
night, he must be using sleeping pills.
Wendell Berry Replies
Bradley
C.Johnso
n
Grand Forks, N.D.
The foregoing letters surprised me with the
intensity
of
the feelings they expressed. According
to the writers' testimony, there
is
nothing wrong
with their computers; they are utterly satisfied
with them
and
all that they stand for. My
correspondents are certain that I am wrong and
that I am, moreover,
on
the losing side, a side
already relegated to the dustbin
of
history. And
yet they grow huffy and condescending over my
tiny dissent. What are they so anxious about?
I can only conclude that I have scratched the
skin
of
a technological fundamentalism that, like
other fundamentalisms, wishes to monopolize a
whole society and, therefore, cannot tolerate the
smallest difference
of
opinion. At the slightest hint
of
a threat to their complacency, they repeat,
like a chorus
of
toads, the notes sounded by
their leaders in industry. The past was gloomy,
drudgery-ridden, servile, meaningless, and slow.
The present, thanks only to purchasable products,
is
meaningful, bright, lively, centralized, and
fast.
The future, thanks only to more purchasable
products,
is
going to be even better. Thus con-
sumers become salesmen, and the world
is
made
safer for corporations.
I am also surprised by the meanness with
which two
of
these writers refer to my wife.
In
order to imply that I
am
a tyrant, they suggest
by
both
direct statement and innuendo that she
is
subservient, characterless, and stupid - a mere
"device" easily forced to provide meaningless
"free labor." I understand that it
is
impossible to
make an adequate public defense
of
one's private
life, and so I will only point
out
that there are
a number
of
kinder possibilities that my critics
have disdained to imagine: that my wife may
do this work because she wants to and likes to;
that she may find some use
and
some meaning
in it; that she may
not
work for nothing. These
gentlemen obviously think themselves femin-
ists
of
the most correct and principled sort,
and yet they do
not
hesitate to stereotype and
insult, on the basis
of
one fact, a woman they
WHY
I
AM
NOT
GOING
TO
BUY
A
COMPUTER
503
do
not
know. They are audacious and irrespon-
sible gossips.
In
his letter, Bradley
C.
Johnson rushes past the
possibility
of
sense in what I said in
my
essay by
implying that I am
or
ought to be a fanatic. That
I am a person
of
this century
and
am implicated
in many practices that I regret
is
fully acknow-
ledged at the beginning
of
my
essay. I did
not
say
that I proposed to end forthwith all
my
involvement
in
harmful technology, for I do
not
know
how to do that. I said merely
that
I
want
to
limit such involvement,
and
to a certain
extent I do
know
how
to
do that.
If
some tech-
nology does damage
to
the world -
as
two
of
the
above letters seem to agree that it does - then why
is
it
not
reasonable,
and
indeed moral, to try
to
limit one's use
of
that technology?
Of
course,
I think
that I
am
right to do this.
I would
not
think so, obviously, if I agreed with
Nathaniel
S.
Borenstein that
"'better'
is
in the
mind
of
the beholder." But
ifhe
truly believes this,
I do
not
see
why he bothers with his personal com-
puter's "up-to-the-minute reports
on
the work-
ings
of
the EPA and the nuclear industry" or why
he wishes to be warned about "urgent legislative
issues." According to his system, the "better" in
a bureaucratic, industrial,
or
legislative
mind
is
as
good
as
the "better" in his. His
mind
apparently
is
being subvetted by an objective standard
of
some
sort,
and
he
had
better look out.
Borenstein does
not
say what he does after his
computer has
drummed
him
awake. I assume
from his letter that he must send donations to con-
servation organizations
and
letters to officials.
Like
James Rhoads, at any rate, he has a clear
conscience. But this
is
what
is
wrong with the
conservation movement.
It
has a clear con-
science. The guilty are always other people,
and
the wrong
is
always somewhere else.
That
is
why
Borenstein finds his
"electronic bulletin board"
so
handy. To the conservation movement, it
is
only
production that causes environmental degradation;
the consumption that supports the production
is
rarely acknowledged to be at fault. The ideal
of
the run-of-the-mill conservationist
is
to impose
restraints
upon
production without limiting
consumption
or
burdening the consciences
of
consumers.
But virtually all
of
our
consumption
now
is
extravagant, and virtually
all
of
it consumes
the world. It
is
not
beside the point that most
electrical power comes from strip-mined coal. The
history
of
the exploitation
of
the Appalachian
coal fields
is
long,
and
it
is
available to readers.
I do
not
see how anyone can read it and plug
in any appliance with a clear conscience. If
Rhoads can do so,
that
does
not
mean
that
his
conscience
is
clear; it means
that
his conscience
is
not
working.
To
the extent
that
we
consume, in
our
present
circumstances,
we
are guilty. To the extent that
we
guilty consumers are conservationists,
we
are absurd. But what can we
do?
Must
we
go
on
writing letters to politicians
and
donating to
conservation organizations until the majority
of
our
fellow citizens agree with
us?
Or
can
we
do something directly to solve
our
share
of
the
problem?
I
am
a conservationist. I believe wholeheartedly
in
putting pressure
on
the politicians and in
maintaining the conservation organizations. But
I wrote my little essay partly in distrust
of
cen-
tralization. I
don't
think
that
the government
and
the conservation organizations alone will
ever make us a conserving society.
"Why do I
need a centralized
computer
system to alert me
to environmental crises? That I live every
hour
of
every day
in
an environmental crisis I know
from all
my
senses.
Why
then
is
not
my
first duty
to reduce, so far
as
I can,
my
own consumption?
Finally, it seems to me
that
none
of
my corre-
spondents recognizes the innovativeness
of
my
essay.
If
the use
of
a
computer
is
a new idea, then
a newer idea
is
not
to
use one.
