Amish Hackers
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That is impressive but that is just insanity. I visited an Amish parish in central Ohio. It wasn't just visiting the gift shop. It was a long story but we ended up sharing a meal and spending the day with them. They are great and warm people. Very good food. Women are reserved and never really talked to us much. The place was fascinating in how clean and pristine it was. Now going back to technology -- yeah they are crazy. I don't have any other way to put it.
See I don't mind artificial handicaps. Like say, ok, let's see if I can program a web server in assembler for fun, or use an editor without syntax highlighting with the delete button disables, or spend the weekend without making any left turns. Those can be fun learning experience or just fun things, goofing around.
But, structuring the a whole life around arbitrary restrictions (can use pneumatic tools but not electrical, can use a car but have to paint it black, can't own a car but oh, you can hire a taxi, can own a tractor but has to have metal wheels, can't use electricity for light but can use it for power tools in the shop) I see it more about abuse and control of minds than anything.
This is especially interesting to see if you look at other countries. Countries where there is pervasive poverty . They would love to get their hands on new tractors, electricity, cell phones, better education and I wonder what would they think about these groups of people in a developed country going out of their way to avoid all those things.
Even though I'm a technologist through and through, I have a lot of respect for what they're up to. I am also very careful about what technology I let into my life; there can be subtle poorly understood effects. E.g., we've been using artificial light for generations, but it has been linked recently with depression and breast cancer.
To me, their restrictions don't seem arbitrary at all. I think they are rooted in different values than mine, but I've learned to respect that.
For those who want more, by the way, NPR did a nice piece today on Amish technology adoption: http://www.npr.org/blogs/alltechconsidered/2013/09/02/217287...
How do they follow the rules? How does one know whether to run pneumatic tool or electric tools in their workshop. To have a cell phone or not. I don't think those are individual decision also doubt everyone automatically arrives to those decision by themselves. So whoever makes those rules, controls them.
One can say that about any religion that has a pervasive set of rules (eat this on this day, abstain from wearing these colors, make sure to not mix this with that food) is about controlling the individuals. Of course growing up with it, it is internalized.
> It seemed like a lot of internal discipline, and they were very community-minded, but it didn't seem cult-y at all.
Oh yeah I enjoyed spending time with them. They seemed very nice to us visitors. Culti-sh is rather relative. They do shun people. That is a cultish trait if you wish. But otherwise they are just as cultish as other major religions perhaps that prescribe random rules about food, clothes, behavior, sex, life in general.
> To me, their restrictions don't seem arbitrary at all.
They are to me. I can't with a straight face say that a half a mil CNC machine workshop operated by an Amish girl in a bonnet is "ok" while a light bulb in the house is not "ok".
Regarding the restrictions, anything where one doesn't understand what's going on seems arbitrary. The elements and their properties look pretty arbitrary until you get cozy with a periodical table and a chemistry textbook.
These are real people, people who won't be speaking for themselves here on HN. I'm uncomfortable with the way you're taking your ignorance and using it to justify calling them crazy, abusive, and arbitrary.
Just to double check you are justifying modifying simple electrical appliances such as blenders with pneumatic versions, using a diesel generator to charge batteries behind the house and using said batteries, tearing tires off of tractors and putting metal wheels, as somehow non-arbitrary and logical
> The elements and their properties look pretty arbitrary until you get cozy with a periodical table and a chemistry textbook.
So their reasons and logic for this is just as clear as atomic numbers and electron shells? It should be easy to explain then in a couple of paragraphs. You should have started with that probably as that would have saved quite a few keystroke.
> These are real people, people who won't be speaking for themselves here on HN. I'm uncomfortable with the way you're taking your ignorance and using it to justify calling them crazy, abusive, and arbitrary.
Yes they are real people and I also enjoy visiting them and spending time with them. They are more friendly (at least to visitors) than most of the other people I meet. That doesn't mean they are not crazy in their approach to technology. And apart from you calling me ignorant (which I may very well be) you still haven't convinced me of why what they do makes sense.
Either this is willful misunderstanding or you're too wound up to really pay attention to what I'm saying. Either way, I'm not seeing the point of further discussion.
They're not individual decisions but they're made by communities a hell of a lot more democratic than the one I grew up in. Amish, Mennonite, Old Order, they are all part of quite small religious congregations without professional clergy. These congregations decide their various policies on new technology themselves after seeing them and discussing them. Different congregations can agree to common sets of rules and standards, those that do are in communion. It's a lot more democratic than representative democracy.
Excommunication is a powerful threat, particularly when peoples' entire lives have been built around family and community.
Arbitrary? The entire article was about showing the nuances and reasoning for the very things you cite. Electricity is not OK if it's on the grid, because it creates dependencies on the outside world. If you're dismissing the "handicaps" as arbitrary, I fear you've missed the entire point of the article.
And it's never been about handicapping anyway. These people want to be as productive as possible. Do some reading about Mennonites (similar philosophies) in Russia; they were some of the most industrious and cutting edge farmers in the nation. It's always been about preventing harm to the community from new technology, not about deliberately making their work more difficult.
So do cell phones, taxi drivers to take your kids to school every morning, and half million dollar computerized precision CNC machines. GMO corn?
> These people want to be as productive as possible.
They are taking regular Chinese mass produced blenders and sticking hand crafted pneumatic motors in them. Or tractors and then cut their tires out and replace with metal wheels. I can't see how that makes them more productive. If anything that makes them less productive, no? Isn't that the other justification for their way of life -- don't become too productive, it will hurt you, and ruin your way of life?
> It's always been about preventing harm to the community from new technology,
Unless preventing harm from technology becomes the main identity and the main occupation of the community then well, one can ask, why have the community?
> Do some reading about Mennonites (similar philosophies) in Russia; they were some of the most industrious and cutting edge farmers in the nation.
So were many German and Dutch farmers if you talk about the turn of the century and before. At least compared to many British immigrant farmers. I would also agree that in extreme conditions (far north, in Siberia, mountains) technology might not be reliable or as usable and sometimes just using dog sleds or simpler methods can work better.
From my readings, one problem they had was engineering large permanent magnets which are usually magnetised using induction which is a bastard off the grid. This pretty knocks motor production on the head. You manufacture compressed air equipment with a lathe/mill easily (I've done it and I'm a shit engineer).
While I think the religious side is batshit (I'm a rampant atheist), the self-sufficiency model is pretty spot on.
Of course it makes them less productive. I'm not saying that these restrictions don't make them less productive. They massively do. I'm saying that making themselves less productive is not their goal. They evaluate a technology based on its moral and societal impact, not on how productive it will make them.
A more accessible parallel might be 18th-19th century America. Slave labor made cotton farms overwhelmingly productive. If a farmer decided not to use slaves, would you accuse him of not wanting to be productive? Or is it possible that for this farmer, slavery was a non-starter on moral grounds?
> Isn't that the other justification for their way of life -- don't become too productive, it will hurt you, and ruin your way of life?
I've never seen evidence of that. I know more about Mennonite history, but Mennonites were just fine about being some of the most productive farmers in Russia. The difference is that "living off the land" and "being the most productive" were not as hard to reconcile back then as they were after the industrial revolution.
Couldn't the same be said of any other group of people? We all draw boundaries around what is acceptable or not. Some people don't want cable television. Some like to live car-free. Others choose vegetarianism or veganism.
The Amish just draw that line someplace we consider extreme. At the end of the day, if they're happy, that's all that matters.
I don't think this is fair. Their choice to refrain from certain technologies is religious in nature, of course, but it comes through the filter of not wanting to be distracted by the rest of the world. They do not believe that there is a divine order that leads directly to the seemingly arbitrary list of can-haves and can't-haves, and as far as I know, they don't even believe that their way of life is necessary for salvation or condemn the rest of Christianity.
This is interesting. We have regulations (eg smoking bans), boycotts, fashions and individual choices. How fundamentally different from all that is what the Amish do?
Understanding their take on technology requires answering this question. This article raised it, but did it answer it?
In their goal to remain off the grid, yet modernize, some
Amish have installed inverters on their diesel generators
linked to batteries to provide them with off-grid 110 volts.
(Not to mention "contributing to technological progress" is a subjective value. I'm pretty sure most Amish value instead "contributing to community connectedness", and I bet some find it disconcerting that most non-Amish are not raised to further this end.)
Of course, these research laboratories are churning out a lot of high-quality modern furniture.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pneumatic_tool "Air tools were formerly unpopular in the DIY market, but are becoming increasingly popular, and have always been ubiquitous in industrial and manufacturing settings."
Its sad that my statement is being down-voted without being refuted in any way.
> advanced the forefront of technology
This is a loaded phrase which makes some unwarranted assumptions. Are Ikea desks that can be made at 1/5th the cost but last 1/10th as long representative of the forefront of technology? I'd argue when it comes to furniture manufacturing, the Amish actually are at the forefront of technology. The Amish are Apple and Ikea is Sony.
> at least extremely sub-optimal.
This doesn't matter. Laboring under the assumption that tools X, Y, and Z are indispensable makes your average shop much less likely to discover tool Q that does all three jobs at once for a quarter of the effort and practically for free. The best technology often looks like nothing at all because you don't even know it's there.
> Pneumatic power tools are nothing new
Neither are computers. Your entire arguments are based on the unstated assumption that electricity and computers are required to make anything that is on the forefront of technology - this is not true. Electricity and computers are all well and good. There's nothing wrong with specialization.
If you look at things from the "good of scientific progress" perspective, it's a great thing that we have people like the Amish who arbitrarily cut off ties to certain technologies but not others. By necessity, they become the absolute experts at the technologies they keep. To us the better pneumatic drill is worthless, but it's still valid technological progress.
I refuted the example of technological progress being use of pneumatic tools, just look at car manufacturing, they're are an essential tool.
>Your entire arguments are based on the unstated assumption that electricity and computers are required to make anything that is on the forefront of technology.
No, my basic assumption is that education and freedom of thought are required for progress. The Amish have neither.
Yeah, the Amish themselves aren't going to reap any benefits, and they probably aren't going to work as fast as people in a fancy lab, but they're also likely to find some one-in-a-million ideas you would never come up with in a fancy lab.
It may not fit your own definition of technological progress, but it's true all the same.
There is no doubt that these people are creative and tinker, it just seems to me that their efforts are wasted, or at least extremely sub-optimal.
Is that true? Rumspringa[0] is specifically to allow exposure to the outside world.
I'm not saying that it doesn't happen, and this guy gets lots of credit for attending/transferring to Columbia w/o a high school diploma. But that just underscores how difficult the transition can be.
Judging from the article on Rumspringa that was posted below, an athiest wouldn't stay in the community.
Is it about relationships? I'd consider theirs more real than mine or those of an average Western citizen. They're developed through conversations and interaction, not texts.
Is it about society? It seems to me that more or less every life story is about being raised by a community, spending a lifetime working in that community, and eventually dying. Is that less real when the community is a village, instead of a globe?
It's hard to criticize their approach without putting unsubstantiated weight on subjective values, like global integration, or contribution to technological progress. That those are worthy virtues is not a given.
But you're right, it would be difficult to be an atheist in that community because it's first and foremost a religious community. I don't see why that would be surprising. Most atheists don't find it very comfortable to be part of a church community either. They leave.
E.g. they seem to be allowed to use the wheel, but would using a rotating wheel of copper wires inside of magnets be allowed if that would output electricity? What if someone completely independently discovers electricity based on the materials and technology they have?
Are inventions allowed? What if they invent a new mechanical way of doing something? Or what if they invent a new combination of herbs that cures certain diseases, would that be allowed?
I'm just interested :)
They treat all new technology with suspicion because they are afraid of the negative impacts it will have on society. And it's not like that's completely unusual...think about how many people, even on HN, bash Facebook for the detrimental impact it has on human interaction. Lots of people have "unplugged" from Facebook. The Amish just take this attitude to the extreme, and make it a community choice, not an individual choice.
http://www.npr.org/blogs/alltechconsidered/2013/09/02/217287...
edit/update: ah, ok, so this is from kevin kelly's site, and he's the author of http://www.kk.org/books/what-technology-wants.php which contains either this text or something similar. not a bad book.