Wendell Berry: Why I am Not going to buy a computer

Interesting how some of his criteria for new equipment, which rule out buying a computer, are very much consistent with the hacker spirit:

3. It should do work that is clearly and demonstrably better than the one it replaces.

4. It should use less energy than the one it replaces.

6. It should be repairable by a person of ordinary intelligence, provided that he or she has the necessary tools.

7. It should be purchasable and repairable as near to home as possible.

If you can only see a computer as a more sophisticated sort of typewriter, this kind of flat dismissal isn't all that surprising.

While I appreciate many points of the article, I find it ironic that I read this rant on... the Internet. (of course it is old, and most likely transcribed by someone else, but still hilarious)

I saw this guy speak at my university my freshman year. He seemed like a bit of a technophobe. Also this article is 20+ years old, not that I think he has changed.

"My final and perhaps mv 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 computcr with a more respectful tone of voice, though I still will not buy one."

Well, if he were writing with a computer, odds are good that it would have caught the typos "mv" and "computcr".

Frankly, this is a lot of hypocritical horse-puckey. If the author truly didn't want to be shackled to the "energy corporations", then he also wouldn't have a website, nor many other modern conveniences.

Kinda shooting fish in a barrel here, aren't we? Just a big communal pile-on invitation? A bit unseemly.