Writer's Block: Luddites unite!

[seawasp]

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This is one of the more inane QotD I've seen. Civilization and technology are what make us capable of what we are today. Technology allows us to live longer,healthier lives with less effort and danger than at any other time in humanity's existence. We have eradicated diseases which used to be the scourges of the Earth, we have built cities that scrape the clouds and landed on the Moon, we now send our eyes and ears across the entire solar system -- and we do so without risking a single human being.

I am alive today -- multiple times over -- because of high technology. I live a better life now than I did 30 years ago, because technology continues to advance. Turn away from technology? That would be the destruction of mankind, not its betterment.

Comments

[nuranar.livejournal.com]

Inane, wannabe philosophical, illogical back-to-nature-ism, or just stupid. I thought from the title it might be just an interesting hook for what modern items a person might eschew; but it's certainly not that. Sheesh.

[howardtayler.livejournal.com]

It can be a nice hook.

1) We turn away from technology and become animals (Note: this story has been done before). Earth is ruled by octopi, who finally gain sentience, (also been done) put on bubble-helmets to explore the land masses, and discover the walking monkeys have stopped eating tako sushi.

2) Our technology advances to the point that we forget we have it. Nanomachines accompany us everywhere. We're born with them. We can't NOT be connected.

[kengr]

People seem to forget that most *food* is technology (cooking, crops that were bred far from what their ancestors were like (corn being a prime example).

Clothing is a technology. Writing is a technology.

[keithmm.livejournal.com]

Moreover, certain foods require more technology than others.

I love pointing out to vegans in temperate climates who try getting holier-than-thou (bonus points if they go on about "organic farming") that they're at least, if not more, dependent on technology, especially transportation tech, than someone who has meat as part of the diet.

Writer's Block: Luddites unite!

[roseembolism.livejournal.com]

I couldn't agree more. Anyone who doesn't like technology hasn't really tried living without it.

[murstein.livejournal.com]

Technology is a set of tools. They can be used for good or evil.

In practice, most of the tools in the box are used for both, and people who associate tech exclusively with one or the other forget that.

[isleburroughs.livejournal.com]

I like improved technology. I stayed in Italy in 1983 for six weeks, studying art, and the water pressure was weak. The shower sprayed all over the place and we had to share the bathroom with the whole floor. That's pensione pendini in Florence. It may be higher tech now. Well, they were trying to put 20th century plumbing in thousands of years old buildings.
Back then the fuel emissions from the cars and motor bikes was horrendous. I couldn't find a sushi restaurant anywhere. I'm sure there must be some by now. The things I missed the most were my hot shower, my sushi and my car. I felt like I'd stepped back in time.

[xander-opal.livejournal.com]

A couple years ago, I sat down with a notebook and asked my grandparents what it was like to farm back in the day. I was told about harnessing horses, about how due to the old springhouse with cold springs to set cans of milk in, grandpa could get sell it as Grade A. How it was to till a field behind a horse, or on a tractor with such low horsepower, removing the muffler made a significant improvement in power. Of drawing a grid in a field, then at each intersection jamming a device into the ground, working levers to deposit corn seed and a bit of fertilizer, then step to the next intersection...

I still see, in a couple of the farm's barns, the track and pulley system used to haul hay up into the loft by hand. It took quite a bit of time and effort in my youth to stuff the barns full and then some with tractor-baled hay and a powered elevator. And I had it easy!

Spreading manure-- give me a tractor with an enclosed cab and heat or A/C. Please. Rather than forking it out the back of a horse-drawn wagon. Or the medical care available for the animals.

I'd love to watch them Luddite-types try to make a survival (wouldn't call it a living) doing things Ye Olde, Pure Way. As I cultivate a field in a tractor with a cab, AC, am/fm/weather band radio, lights, air-ride seat. At six miles per hour, 25' on a pass.

[seawasp]

I would simply invite anyone who thinks of lower tech as simpler and better to read the Little House books. While Laura Ingalls Wilder shifted events around and dramatized some things, overall it's a clear and accurate account of the life to be expected by a pioneer family living with a minimum of modern technology. Laura's father was clearly an extremely intelligent, skilled, and multitalented man, and yet one can see many times where he and the family were pushed to the brink, mainly due to things that humans can't control without technology -- or, if we still can't control them, we can mitigate the effects. The locusts in Plum Creek, the Long Winter, prairie fires, illnesses... the list just goes on and on.

[xander-opal.livejournal.com]

Pretty much, yep. Just had about 24 hours without power, and I was thinking of this thread again. Fed 50,000 pounds of feed, roughly, to the total of cattle ranging from 8 months to over ten years old. Thank goodness for generators and tractors to run them, and a loader with a roughly 2.5 cubic yard bucket. Most of the feed is loaded into the mixer that way; there's 3.5 ton of high-moisture ground corn that has to be unloaded from a classic upright silo. That takes longer, but its a matter of it being cheaper to just use what we already have than to build yet another bunker-type silo.

I've read some accounts of pioneer life, and while it is amazing the amount of knowledge they had to have to keep going, I like technology and looking said knowledge up with a web browser.