Books – Page 20

Bertrand Russell on the career treadmill

It’s a shame this book The Conquest of Happiness isn’t more popular. When I finish, I plan to re-read a few pages a day, like I did with Daily Rituals. Keeps it fresh.

Here’s the PDF and other versions.

Here’s Russell in his chapter on competition:

“It is very singular how little men seem to realize that they are not caught in the grip of a mechanism from which there is no escape, but that the treadmill is one upon which they remain merely because they have not noticed that it fails to take them up to a higher level. I am thinking, of course, of men in higher walks of business, men who already have a good income and could, if they chose, live on what they have. To do so would seem to them shameful, like deserting from the army in the face of the enemy, though if you ask them what public cause they are serving by their work, they will be at a loss to reply as soon as they have run through the platitudes to be found in the advertisements of the strenuous life.”

Much books

My last books review was in July. Just like that, wha-bam, and half a year’s gone!

The bitcoin posts were getting monotonous…hope this helps :)

If you’re going to pick one from the bunch, make it 100 Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marques [Kindle]. Unfortunately there is no ebook version, but I can lend you my paperback.

100 Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marques — AWESOME!! his genre-birthing style (dubbed ‘magical realism’) is worth experiencing…certain sections left a tingling sensation in my brain, like I’m stuck in a maze and suddenly the walls start to undulate and I can see around corners and through dead-ends…

A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway — essays written during his Europe years. When I think of Hemingway, I think of this Murakami quote:

I stop every day right at the point where I feel I can write more. Do that, and the next day’s work goes surprisingly smoothly. I think Ernest Hemingway did something like that. – Murakami

It’s interesting what time and success do to peoples’ reputations. dead-Noble-Prize-winning-Hemingway is untouchable, but while alive he cheated on his wife, wrote anti-Semitic personal letters, was an extreme narcissist…

Essays in Idleness by Yoshida Kenko — some are good, some are wacky

Good: It is a most wonderful comfort to sit alone beneath a lamp, book spread before you, and commune with someone from the past whom you have never met.

Wacky: The one thing a man should not have is a wife. No matter who the woman may be, you would grow to hate her if you lived with her and saw her day in day out, and the woman must become dissatisfied too.

Hyperion by Dan Simmons — the In N’ Out burger of sci-fi…maximum enjoyment:guilt ratio for eating a cheeseburger/reading a sci-fi book

My Struggle by Karl Ove Knaussgard — a literary sensation in his native Norway; something like 1 in 10 Norwegians bought a copy! If you read it, you’ll understand what a masochistic writing process he went through…like dragging yourself naked across a dirty wet floor with your family watching

Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro — my first Ishiguro book; looking forward to more; the butler’s refined sensibilities and attention to detail and respect for tradition…the restrained and complex relationship with Miss Kenton…it’s the Japanese version of Downton Abbey. The ending was pitch-perfect

Waking Up by Sam Harris — began as a sprint, but finished as a slog; he asks an important question: how can we toss the religious bathwater while keeping the spiritual baby? Alain de Botton asks the same question, but where Sam Harris appeals to the left brain (the rational, systematic), ADB appeals to the right (the emotional, empathetic)

What Technology Wants by Kevin Kelly — here’s the cheatsheet

Wind, Sand, Stars by Antoine de St. Exupery — (nerding out in 3…2…1…) what Lord Elrond did to forge the great sword Anduril, which he gave to Aragorn in LOTR, is what St. Exupery does to the written word…he’s a pure craftsman, every sentence is like a song lyric

Tragic yet fitting that he disappeared flying his beloved plane on a postal mission. This book is a travelogue of those adventures.

Technology Matters by Dan Nye — here’s the cheatsheet

I also re-read some favorites, for the same reason devout Christians read the Bible daily. I’m a devout book-nut.

22 Immutable Laws of Marketing — best of its kind for business psychology and marketing practices

Daily Rituals by Mason Currey — here’s the cheatsheet

So Good They Can’t Ignore You by Cal Newport — here’s the cheatsheet

The Book of Tao — like static stretching for the brain…pleasant and painful at the same time

1-Page Summary: Technology Matters by David Nye

I was surprised by how much I enjoyed reading Kevin Kelly’s What Technology Wants, which is a study of technology’s evolving role in society. In that book, which I wrote about here, Kelly frequently cites Technology Matters by David Nye [Amazon].

Nye’s book is more academic than Kelly’s; the facts and analysis are denser, the perspective is more balanced, and other scholars and seminal literature figure prominently.

What I enjoy most about these 2 books is they investigate something I take for granted. Technology mediates every aspect of my life — from what is obviously “tech”, like the Macbook I’m using to draft this post, to what is no longer considered “tech”, like my ability to draw clean, cold water from any tap in my SF apartment.

We are obsessed with technology when its new, and in a matter of months or years, it becomes ordinary and commonplace, something to be complained about when it stops working, like wi-fi, or Google Maps, or hot showers :)

So, please read these books. If you only choose one, I’d go with Kelly’s book because it is more enjoyable, but I think you build a better fact-base from Nye’s.

Here’s my 1-page summary of Technology Matters, supported by selected quotes and excerpts. As with all my 1-pagers, I write them for personal interest first and public readership second, so I tend to miss or ignore things that don’t interest me.

While we generally believe science (e.g., materials science) leads to technology (e.g., velcro), the reality is often reversed

For most of human history technology came first; theory came along later and tried to make sense of practical results.

Science has played a similar role in the refinement of many technologies, including the windmill, the water wheel, the locomotive, the automobile, and the airplane. The Wright Brothers were well-read and gifted bicycle mechanics, and they tested their designs in a wind tunnel of their own invention, but they were not scientists.

It’s a symbiotic relationship: just as we change technology, it changes us (our bodies, behaviors)

McLuhan argued that the phonetic alphabet intensified the visual function and that literate cultures devalued the other senses-a process that moveable type intensified. Furthermore, McLuhan thought electronic media extended the central nervous system and linked humanity together in a global network.

In everyday life, technologies mediate almost all experience from the moment one awakens until going to sleep at night. Much of what one sees is subtly shaped by the spectra of light thrown by different types of bulbs and fluorescent tubes. The air itself is heated, cooled, or dehumidified according to the needs of the location and the season.

Technology rarely evolves as intended; its applications and impact are unpredictable

When humans possess a tool, they excel at finding new uses for it. The tool often exists before the problem to be solved. Latent in every tool are unforeseen transformations.

In the 1960s a great many sociologists projected that automation would reduce the average American’s work week to less than 25 hours by the century’s end.

In short, the telegraph, the telephone, the phonograph, and the personal computer, surely four of the most important inventions in the history of communications, were initially understood as curiosities.

Consumers — both individuals and in the aggregate — shape how a technology is incorporated and evolved

…consumers, not scientists, often discover what is “the next big thing.” Most new technologies are market-driven. Viagra was not developed as a sexual stimulant, but the college students who served as guinea pigs discovered what consumers would like about it.

American social values emphasize individualized technologies. Every house has its own heating system, even though this is a wasteful and inefficient choice. If the market to some extent shapes technologies, the market in turn is inflected by cultural values.

Wal-Mart not only expresses the general Western preference for efficiency in production over other values; it also expresses an American preference to pass on savings in efficiency to consumers and stockholders but not to workers.

It required a generation for the public to find that it wanted the phonograph not primarily to dictate letters or preserve voices for posterity but to play music.

However, citizens do not play a strong role in defining technology policy and regulation

Rick Sclove has argued…that when new technologies are being adopted ordinary citizens typically play too small a role, often only after the most important decisions have been made.

The Dutch and the Danes have developed forums of representative ordinary citizens who interview “experts” and then formulate advice on technological policy.

Leaving “the market” in control permits corporations with little hindrance or discussion to disseminate thousands of products that foster lasting changes in everyday life.

“Science and technology policies have a social impact comparable to that of taxation policy in the colonial period. In 1776, political freedom entailed the right to a voice in taxation decisions because these decisions were primary forces in shaping the fabric of personal and social life.

Many of our most critical technologies achieved “product-market fit” because they were fun

The public used both the phonograph and the radio less for work than for fun. Likewise, many children use personal computers less to write papers and pursue education than to play computer games and visit strange websites.

In the 1990s commercialization undermined hopes that the Internet would primarily function as a free space of public discussion. Instead, advertisements, solicitations, pornography, and fraud are rife.

Though some apparently reasonable technologies fail to sell, people may nonetheless flock to “unreasonable” devices, such as Japanese electronic pets.

Consumers want choice and personalization

During the first years of the assembly line, Henry Ford refused to manufacture a wide variety of cars. Instead, the Model T was available in only a few variant forms and a limited range of colors. Ford was reputed to have said that customers could get any color they wanted, so long as it was black. […] To Ford’s dismay, the public embraced annual changes, and gradually GM won so much of the market that in 1927 Ford reluctantly abandoned the Model T (after producing more than 15 million) and began to make annual models with greater variety.

Today Levittown is not a monotonous row of “little boxes.” Homeowners have added garages, pillars, dormers, fences, and extensions. They have painted their homes many different colors, and planted quite different shrubs around them, landscaping each plot into individuality. In 2006, a visitor to Levittown has to study the houses carefully to see their common elements. Three generations of homeowners have used a wide range of technologies to obliterate uniformity.

Rather than adjust to a single pattern, each cultural region creates hybrid forms, which Robertson calls “glocalization.” Even McDonald’s finds that it must give in to this process. In Spain it sells red wine to go with its hamburgers, and in India (where cows are sacred) it does not serve beef. More generally, an endless process of creolization is taking place, producing such novel combinations as Cuban-Chinese cuisine, Norwegian country music, and “Trini” home pages.

(after reading this, I immediately went and found a Norwegian country music playlist on Spotify :) here’s the link

Once a technology gains momentum, it becomes hard to modify or replace

Variation in design continues during early stages of development, until one design meets with wide approval. Once a particular design is widely accepted, however, variation in form gives way to innovation in production.

A society may choose to adopt either direct current or alternating current, or to use 110 volts, or 220 volts, or some other voltage, but a generation after these choices have been made it is costly and difficult to undo such a decision.

Similarly, the automobile achieved technological momentum not as an isolated machine, but as part of a system that included road building, driver education programs, gas stations, repair shops, manufacturers of spare parts, and new forms of land use that spread out the population into suburbs that, practically speaking, were accessible only to cars and trucks.

Eventually technology becomes commonplace and ordinary; we forget it is technology or are removed from its workings

As we become accustomed to new things, they are woven into the fabric of daily life. Gradually, every new technology seems to become “natural,” and therefore somehow “inevitable” because it is hard to imagine a world without it. Through most of history flush toilets did not exist, but after 100 years of widespread use they seem normal and natural; the once-familiar outhouse now seems disgusting and unacceptable.

The railroad seemed magnificent in 1840, but appeared to be a grasping monopoly by 1890. Airplanes miraculously conquered gravity in 1910, and pilots were demigods. But these emotions cooled as flight became routine, and passengers focused on the tedium of checking in, on leg room, on airline food, and on lost luggage.

Computers offer a suggestive example of how the surface emerges. The first generation of personal computer owners sometimes built their machines and usually understood how they worked. With each succeeding generation, however, computer owners are less likely to understand the insides of their machines, which have become as opaque as the automobile, the automatic furnace, the birth-control pill, the pacemaker…

Societies can shape a technology’s adoption and evolution, but it is increasingly difficult in our flat world

From ancient times, some have regulated or even resisted technologies. A Byzantine city in the 530s had zoning laws that separated kilns, blacksmiths, and polluting activities from shops and houses.

Japan’s long, successful rejection of guns is revealing. A society or a group that is able to act without outside interference can abolish a powerful technology. In the United States, the Mennonites and the Amish do not permit any device to be used before they have carefully evaluated its potential impact on the community.

Technology has 2nd, 3rd and n-th order effects, both unforeseen problems and benefits, which create the need/opportunity for more technology

Computers are expected to improve office efficiency, but in practice people spend enormous amounts of time adjusting to updated software and they suffer eyestrain, back problems, tendonitis, and cumulative trauma disorder.

For example, as the electrical grid spread across the United States, small manufacturers rushed in with a stunning array of new products-electrified cigar lighters, model trains, Christmas tree lights, musical toilet-paper dispensers, and shaving cream warmers, as well as toasters, irons, refrigerators, and washing machines. As electric devices proliferated, the large manufacturers Westinghouse and General Electric, like the computer hardware makers of today, soon found it impossible to compete in every area.

Where once the telephone bill reflected a simple transaction between a customer and the phone company, now the technology of the telephone is the basis for a wide range of commercial relations that includes toll-free calls to businesses, e-mail, faxes, and SMS messages. Telephones enable people not only to speak to one another, but also to send photographs, texts, news, and videos. As with the electrical system, the telephone provided the infrastructure, or even the main platform, for many unanticipated businesses.

Wolfgang Schivelbusch presciently observed that “the more efficient the technology, the more catastrophic its destruction when it collapses. There is an exact ratio between the level of the technology with which nature is controlled, and the degree of severity of its accidents.”

Privacy was not possible for many before the second half of the nineteenth century. Before then, most houses were small, with shared public rooms and shared sleeping rooms. The idea that children could and should have individual bedrooms is at most a few hundred years old.

While technology is generally adopted and admired, there is an undercurrent of resistance and discomfort

And in Frankenstein (1818), a novel still resonant today, Mary Shelley evoked the possibility that scientists might create monsters that would escape their control.

In conceiving the first modern utopia, Thomas More rejected high consumption. His Utopia increased leisure by drastically reducing human wants and adopting a modest style of life.

Henry David Thoreau argued that, rather than constantly expand one’s desires, it was better to simplify material life to make time for reading, reflection, and close study of nature.

By Thoreauvian logic, a good many conveniences not only prove unnecessary; they create debt and force us to work long hours so that we can pay for them.

Technology can create social costs that take generations to resolve, but they are usually offset by social benefits and opportunities, too

Industrialization did not create a permanent underclass; rather, it shifted factory laborers to white-collar work. But this shift took place over many decades, and for generations of workers the factory system meant alienation.

As factories became more productive, manufacturers could choose how to spend the surplus. They could raise wages for workers, lower prices for consumers, take greater profits for themselves, make further improvements in the machinery, or allocate resources to all of these options. They often focused on low prices, not only to win market share but also to drive remaining artisans out of work, completing the process of industrialization.

In the era of “silent” films, professional musicians had regular employment in the movie theaters. No more. Most telephone operators have disappeared, replaced by automatic switchboards. Many bank tellers have disappeared, replaced by automated teller machines.

Today, all three of the traditional sectors of the economy-agriculture, manufacturing, and service-are experiencing technological displacement, forcing millions onto the unemployment rolls. The prospects indeed seemed dim, yet when Rifkin’s book appeared in the 1990s, the American economy was creating an average of a million new jobs per year. The rapid computerization of the economy was not producing the dire effects Rifkin predicted.

Technologies do not in and of themselves cause gender inequality. Rather, they can be socially constructed to restrict or improve women’s access to some jobs.

In practice, it is “impossible to dispense with a core of skilled workers. Whether they are engaged in repairing the existing equipment or in installing the next generation of technology, they must be capable of understanding each task as part of a larger complex of tasks…”

During the 1980s, Shoshana Zuboff studied fully computerized workplaces in operation and saw that, despite management’s explicit intention to use computers to de-skill workers and to increase its control of operatives, something quite different was taking place in some companies.”, Computers demystified management, and skilled workers could use them to undermine hierarchy, secrecy, and centralization. A fully computerized plant became more transparent.

And something which Silicon Valley can relate to:

And there is a third group, made up of what Richard Reich calls “symbolic analysts”-people “who solve, identify, and broker new problems.” In the borderless world economy, they are in great demand. Their work is not routine but varied and interesting, which explains why many of them are “workaholics.” They put in longer hours not due to economic necessity and not (only) because of an insatiable desire for more consumer goods. These are usually well-educated professionals who love their jobs, and even when away from the office never really leave it behind.

That’s all folks! Here’s a list of all 1-page cheatsheets, and a list of all books.

Excerpts from Self-Reliance by Ralph Waldo Emerson

emerson-and-grandson A brief and wonderful 88-pager.

Emerson counsels (admonishes?) us to never conform, to always speak our minds, and to create original work.

Here were my favorite excerpts, quotes:

In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts; they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty.

Infancy conforms to nobody; all conform to it; so that one babe commonly makes four or five out of the adults who prattle and play to it.

I am ashamed to think how easily we capitulate to badges and names, to large societies and dead institutions. Every decent and well-spoken individual affects and sways me more than is right.

It is easy in the world to live after the world’s opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.

A man Caesar is born, and for ages after we have a Roman Empire. Christ is born, and millions of minds so grow and cleave to his genius that he is confounded with virtue and the possible of man. An institution is the lengthened shadow of one man;

But man postpones or remembers; he does not live in the present, but with reverted eye laments the past, or, heedless of the riches that surround him, stands on tiptoe to foresee the future.

Discontent is the want of self-reliance: it is infirmity of will.

Society never advances. It recedes as fast on one side as it gains on the other. It undergoes continual changes; it is barbarous, it is civilized, it is christianized, it is rich, it is scientific […] For every thing that is given something is taken. Society acquires new arts and loses old instincts.

Nothing can bring you peace but yourself. Nothing can bring you peace but the triumph of principles.

Great works of art teach us to abide by our spontaneous impression, else tomorrow a stranger will say with masterly good sense precisely what we have thought and felt all the time, and we shall be forced to take with shame our own opinion from another.

Do your work, and I shall know you.

He who has more obedience than I masters me, though he should not raise his finger. Round him I must revolve by the gravitation of spirits.

The power men possess to annoy me I give them by a weak curiosity. No man can come near me but through my act.

1-Page Summary (of sorts): Kevin Kelly’s What Technology Wants

Kevin Kelly Of the 39 books I’ve read in the last 12 months, this one ranks in the top 3, alongside The Power of Habit and So Good They Can’t Ignore You. These books have added depth and clarity to topics which I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about (Power of Habit == a meaningful life; So Good == career success; What Technology Wants == technology’s influence on our lives).

Kevin Kelly is awesome. His Cool Tools book is great, his blog is great (some of my favorite posts: 1 2 3), he’s a deep and open-minded thinker. In What Technology Wants, Kevin examines technology’s role in history (going far before, and beyond, computers and the internets), and explains its dual role as humanity’s best friend and worst enemy.

There’s no way one page would suffice, as the book has many tangents and the arguments are nuanced and I wouldn’t properly capture his conclusions. So instead I’m sharing a selection of excerpts that convey the book’s spirit, and include my brief analyses. Hope you find it useful, and I highly encourage you to read the book!

—

Technology builds on itself, in usually unpredictable ways:

When Sapiens gained control of fire, this powerful technology further modified the natural terrain on a massive scale. Such a tiny trick—burning grasslands, controlling it with backfires, and summoning flames to cook grains—disrupted vast regions of the continents.

Double-entry accounting unleashed the banking industry in Venice and launched a global economy. The invention of moveable-type printing in Europe encouraged Christians to read their religion’s founding text themselves and make their own interpretations, and that launched the very idea of “protest” within and against religion.

Science-fiction guru Isaac Asimov made the astute observation that in the age of horses many ordinary people eagerly and easily imagined a horseless carriage. The automobile was an obvious anticipation since it was an extension of the first-order dynamics of a cart—a vehicle that goes forward by itself. An automobile would do everything a horse-pulled carriage did but without the horse. But Asimov went on to remark how difficult it was to imagine the second-order consequences of a horseless carriage, such as drive-in movie theaters, paralyzing traffic jams, and road rage.

We are literally and figuratively transformed through technology

The extended human is the technium. Marshall McLuhan, among others, noted that clothes are people’s extended skin, wheels extended feet, camera and telescopes extended eyes.

Technology doesn’t disappear

I was challenged on this conclusion by a highly regarded historian of technology who told me without thinking, “Look, they don’t make steam-powered automobiles anymore.” Well, within a few clicks on Google I very quickly located folks who are making brand-new parts for Stanley steam-powered cars. Nice shiny copper valves, pistons, whatever you need. With enough money you could put together an entirely new steam-powered car. And of course, thousand of hobbyists are still bolting together steam-powered vehicles, and hundreds more are keeping old ones running.

Today, in the United States alone, there are 5,000 amateurs who knap fresh arrowhead points by hand. They meet on weekends, exchange tips in flint-knapping clubs, and sell their points to souvenir brokers. John Whittaker, a professional archaeologist and flint knapper himself, has studied these amateurs and estimates that they produce over one million brand-new spear and arrow points per year. These new points are indistinguishable, even to experts like Whittaker, from authentic ancient ones.

Human evolution with technology has been, for the most part, a trend of improvement

In ancient times when a bearded prophet forecast what was to come, the news was generally bad. The idea that the future brought improvement was never very popular until recently.

As Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi once said, “There is more good than evil in the world—but not by much.” Unexpectedly, “not much” is all that’s needed when you have the leverage of compound interest at work

Over time our laws, mores, and ethics have slowly expanded the sphere of human empathy. Generally, humans originally identified themselves primarily via their families. We are currently in an unfinished expansion beyond nation and maybe even race and may soon be crossing the species boundary. Other primates are, more and more, deemed worthy of humanlike rights. If the golden rule of morality and ethics is to “do unto others as you would have others do unto you,” then we are constantly expanding our notion of “others.” This is evidence for moral progress.

Kevin Kelly - blue

(what a cool portrait, c/o rukuku)But technology is a double-edged sword (surprise!)

All the promises, paradoxes, and trade-offs carried by Progress, with a capital P, are represented in a city. In fact, we can inspect the notion and veracity of technological progress at large by examining the nature of cities. Cities may be engines of innovation, but not everyone thinks they are beautiful, particularly the megalopolises of today, with their sprawling, rapacious appetites for energy, materials, and attention. They seem like machines eating the wilderness, and many people wonder if they are eating us as well.

The immense satisfactions of seasonal toil, abundant leisure, strong family ties, reassuring conformity, and rewarding physical labor will always pull our hearts. If everything were equal, who would want to leave a Greek island, or a Himalayan village, or the lush gardens of southern China?

Each year 1.2 million people die in automobile accidents. The dominant technological transportation system kills more people than cancer.

In his sprawling, infamous 35,000-word manifesto, the Unabomber wrote: “The system does not and cannot exist to satisfy human needs. Instead, it is human behavior that has to be modified to fit the needs of the system. This has nothing to do with the political or social ideology that may pretend to guide the technological system. It is the fault of technology, because the system is guided not by ideology but by technical necessity.” […] I have read almost every book on the philosophy and theory of technology and interviewed many of the wisest people pondering the nature of this force. So I was utterly dismayed to discover that one of the most astute analyses of the technium was written by a mentally ill mass murderer and terrorist.

Technology has its own needs and in some ways we are but shepherds

Biologist Richard Dawkins estimates that “the eye has evolved independently between 40 and 60 times around the animal kingdom,” leading him to claim, “it seems that life, at least as we know it on this planet, is almost indecently eager to evolve eyes.”

Navigation by echolocation has been found four times: in bats, dolphins, and two species of cave-dwelling birds

Weirdly, both Wallace and Darwin found the theory of natural selection after reading the same book on population growth by Thomas Malthus.

Alexander Bell and Elisha Gray both applied to patent the telephone on the same day

After Rowling launched Harry Potter in 1997 to great success, she successfully rebuffed a lawsuit by an American author who published a series of children’s books 13 years earlier about Larry Potter, an orphaned boy wizard wearing glasses and surrounded by Muggles. In 1990 Neil Gaiman wrote a comic book about a dark-haired English boy who finds out on his 12th birthday that he is a wizard and is given an owl by a magical visitor.

Large-scale prohibitions against technologies are rare. They are hard to enforce. The gun was outlawed in Shogun Japan for three centuries, exploration ships in Ming China for three centuries, and silk spinning in Italy for two centuries.

We are more dependent on it than vice-versa (?)

I asked him, “Do you think technology is making the world better or worse?” Lucas’s answer: If you watch the curve of science and everything we know, it shoots up like a rocket. We’re on this rocket and we’re going perfectly vertical into the stars. But the emotional intelligence of humankind is equally if not more important than our intellectual intelligence.

About 10,000 years ago, humans passed a tipping point where our ability to modify the biosphere exceeded the planet’s ability to modify us. That threshold was the beginning of the technium. We are at a second tipping point where the technium’s ability to alter us exceeds our ability to alter the technium.

What we do suggest is that the human race might easily permit itself to drift into a position of such dependence on the machines that it would have no practical choice but to accept all of the machines decisions. […] Autopilots fly our very complex flying machines. Algorithms control our very complex communications and electrical grids. And for better or worse, computers control our very complex economy.

But we adopt it willingly, because it increases choice and freedom

The young are not under some kind of technological spell that warps their minds into believing civilization is better. Sitting in the mountains, they are under no spell but poverty’s. They clearly know what they give up when they leave. They understand the comfort and support of family, the priceless value of community acquired in a small village, the blessings of clean air, and the soothing wholeness of the natural world. They feel the loss of immediate access to these, but they leave their shacks anyway because in the end, the tally favors the freedoms created by civilization. They can (and will) return to the hills to be rejuvenated.

There is much to learn from the Amish and how they handle technology

…their minimal lifestyle is prospering (Amish population grows at 4 percent annually) while middle-class white-collar and factory workers are increasingly unemployed and withering. […] Yet Amish lives are anything but antitechnological. In fact, on my several visits with them, I have found them to be ingenious hackers and tinkerers, the ultimate makers and do-it-yourselfers.

They don’t adopt everything new, but when they do embrace it, it’s half a century after everyone else does. By that time, the benefits and costs are clear, the technology stable, and it is cheap. […] They are slow geeks.

The Amish practice a remarkable tradition called rumspringa, wherein their teenagers are allowed to ditch their homemade uniforms—suspenders and hats for boys, long dresses and bonnets for girls—and don baggy pants and short skirts, buy a car, listen to music, and party for a few years before they decide to forever give up these modern amenities and join the Old Order church.

This sums it up:

To maximize our own contentment, we seek the minimum amount of technology in our lives. Yet to maximize the contentment of others, we must maximize the amount of technology in the world.

Thanks for reading. Here’s a list of all 1-page cheatsheets, and a list of all books!