To be more tech-savvy, borrow these strategies from the Amish

"To be more tech-savvy, borrow these strategies from the Amish" (sic on capitalization). By Alex Mayyasi. "Psyche" section on Aeon. As of May 2021, at this link.[1]

Learning from ultra-Orthodox Jews and, more so, the Amish on high-consciousness selection of technologies to adopt.

Despite growing up within driving distance of Amish Country, I never expected to see the Amish as a source of tech-savvy guidance. A decentralised religious group with roots in Germany and Switzerland, the Amish immigrated to the US in the 1700s – mainly to Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, where they remain a regular sight, sporting simple outfits, working on family farms, and driving horse-drawn buggies. Many Americans think of them as Luddites who make nice wooden furniture. For years, I viewed them (naively) as a society frozen in time. Had they just picked a year, I wondered, and refused to use any technology invented later than that?

They had not. "The foundation of this ‘honourable alternative’" to avoiding "addictive" technology "is to not adopt every single new technology, or use cars, phones and social media as soon as they become the norm. Instead, the Amish make slow and deliberate decisions as a collective. Rather than rushing optimistically or blindly into the future, they move forward cautiously, open but sceptical."

See for the literary and film motif of retro groups in modern and PoMo (post-modern) societies, as parodied in Futurama: "Ghost in the Machines" — and for some good advice for adopting new tech in real life.

RDE, finishing, 11May21, with thanks to W. R. Raike