Most people consider the Amish an interesting collection of throwbacks who have turned their backs on the modern world. On a recent trip to Lancaster, Pennsylvania with my wife and kids, I found this popular stereotype quite mistaken. Beneath the pastel shirts and black trousers and horse-and- buggies portrayed so vividly in Witness; behind the cornfields and customs that sway layer upon layer back to 17th-century Swiss/high-German roots, the Amish have not so much said no to high-tech as developed an ingenious strategy for getting the most out of it.
To begin with, the Amish are not one, but a variety of subtly, and in some cases drastically, different groups with a wide range of attitudes towards modern devices. Most importantly, no Amish group has rejected technology outright - rather, they struggle with the appeal of technologies, usually accepting a new machine at first, agonizing over its real and projected social consequences, and then deciding whether and to what extent it will be used. They come the closest I have seen to a living embodiment of a philosophy for technology.
In most cases, the Amish in fact accept new technology, while straining the limits of creativity to keep it from disrupting their social order. Electricity from central power companies is forbidden - sockets in the wall are appendages of an uncontrollable, huge, external, political-economic power structure - but electricity from 12 volt, self-sufficient batteries is all right. Phones are frowned upon (not absolutely forbidden) in the homes of most Amish, but since the 1930s, phone "shanties" on the edges of property have been permitted. These booths are seen as affording most of the advantages of the phone, while strengthening the communal use which the Amish see as crucial to a healthy life. As McLuhan pointed out, the phone line in the home makes our private lives more public than a walk outside.
The Amish proscription on centrally supplied electricity dovetails nicely with its religious-ethical dislike of mass media - like television, which usually can't run on batteries - and its content. But a new device has crept into some Amish homes and businesses: a clever little "inverter," which transforms 12-volt battery current into a reasonable likeness of the 110-volt power that comes from the socket. How exquisite the irony, then, when TV and yes, even computers are now connected to inversion 110-volt power.
Pocket calculators that run on batteries and sun are already in widespread use. As far as I could see, laptop and notebook computers are not yet used, but the profound decentralizing effect of these media makes them natural allies of the Amish.
Leapfrogging is a well-known feature of technological evolution. The key insight here is that what's usually wrong with technology is that there's not enough of it. Surprisingly, many Amish seem to understand this better than we "English" of the larger world.
How intriguing to think that the Amish, and their deep sense of privacy and independence, could be a source or even a spearhead for enlightened digital technology to empower the individual and the pioneering community in the next century.
