Why Wendell Berry is still not going to buy a computer
| Port Royal, Ky.
While much of the world salivated at the promise of the desktop computer, essayist and cultural critic Wendell Berry was unimpressed.
Three decades after publishing his controversial 1988 essay聽 in Harper鈥檚 Magazine, Mr. Berry still doesn鈥檛 own one. He doesn鈥檛 have a smartphone either.
That perspective has lent the octogenarian a unique view of the role of technology in this increasingly digitized world. From behind his typewriter, he has remained skeptical about what he sees as 鈥渁 technological fundamentalism,鈥� or blind faith in computers to liberate humanity.
Why We Wrote This
The digital revolution has certainly been a catalyst for progress. But that comes at a cost. In an exclusive interview, digital resister Wendell Berry cautions against putting blind faith in computers.
Mr. Berry recently sat down with the Monitor at his home in Port Royal, Kentucky. The following discussion has been edited for clarity and brevity.
What made you want to publicly declare your intention to abstain from the computer bandwagon?
It seemed to me that everybody was jumping into this as if it would save the world. And that was really the way it was being advertised. 鈥淭his is the solution to all our problems. This is going to speed things up.鈥� And so, I made a little dissent. It鈥檚 really a tiny little no that I said.
While you were staging that 鈥渓ittle dissent鈥� President Ronald Reagan declared the computer revolution 鈥渢he greatest force for the advancement of human freedom the world has ever seen.鈥�
The idea that you鈥檙e free if you buy everything that鈥檚 marketed to you is absurd. You鈥檝e become free only when you begin to choose. Take it 鈥� or leave it. That鈥檚 our freedom, that鈥檚 real freedom.
The way the human race practically bought into this computer sales talk was just contemptible. You come on the market with this thing. It鈥檚 exactly the way they marketed television. 鈥淭his is the answer. Everybody鈥檚 going to be smarter now. Everybody鈥檚 going to be in touch.鈥� Same line. And they don鈥檛 anticipate any negative result. Never.
Three decades later, conversations have turned to controlling those unforeseen negative results. The shooter who recently killed 50 Muslim worshippers in Christchurch, New Zealand, is reported to have found inspiration for his belief system on the internet.
The education industry argument always is that better education will do the trick. And it鈥檚 up to us; we鈥檙e the last hope of mankind. They never think, much less admit, that to educate a born crook is to make a worse crook than he would have been without an education.
One of the appeals of computers is up-to-the-minute access to information. It鈥檚 almost as if computers have transformed people, giving them their own isolated command centers.
They got whole libraries now in these things. And if you want to know something, you could just ask your computer and it鈥檒l tell you. But this doesn鈥檛 contribute to the formation of a mind.
Information refers to something with the power to inform. It鈥檚 formal. And it鈥檚 organic. Your mind is made from within, to a certain extent, by information. Made from without, too, because it responds to its social situation, and its geographic situation, its cultural situation. This is really complex and really interesting.
Nobody could be bored who is really searching the world for knowledge to inform the mind. So why stick a keyboard and a screen between the mind and the world? I鈥檓 not without information. I study the fields, the woods, and the river. I read, and I hear, and I remember.
In Martin Ford鈥檚 鈥淩ise of the Robots,鈥� he predicts that lawyers, teachers, fast-food workers, radiologists, even journalists, all could be mostly automated in the future.
There is such a thing as human relations. And there is such a thing as getting a lot of satisfaction, joy, fun from human relations. And I don鈥檛 understand why people are willing to give up on that. When you write an article for a magazine, you鈥檙e offering half 鈥� you鈥檙e part of a conversation. The reader is invited to complete it, perhaps by disagreeing. This is a relationship.
The only motive that鈥檚 worth anything is love. If you don鈥檛 do the work that you love, and if you don鈥檛 do it for love, your artistry is not informed by love. It can鈥檛 be any good. So there鈥檚 the argument, as far as I鈥檓 concerned, against robots.
You can鈥檛 make a robot that will work from love. It doesn鈥檛 work from anything; it doesn鈥檛 have any motives. Or its motive is electricity, you could say.
So my little essay about the computer, why I鈥檓 not going to buy a computer, was just a part of my strategy to try to keep myself whole as a human being. I don鈥檛 want my life to be lived for me by a machine.
