Amish Hackers

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Today's surprising article: Kevin Kelly on Amish hackers. In a thoughtful article, Kelly explores Amish culture (from an outsider's perspective, anyway) focusing on their use of technology. Kelly's thesis is that the Amish aren't anti-technology per se -- they're just slower to adopt technology, and have a highly developed sense of which technologies they adopt. In Kelly's visits to Amish territory, he witnessed a people who had carefully selected their technologies, balancing family and community values with technological convenience. This attitude towards technology is in stark contrast to the typical Western practice of adopting whatever is newest or fastest.

Here's a snippet from Kelly's article:



...The Amish are steadily, slow[ly] adopting technology. They are slow geeks. As one Amish man told Howard Rheingold, "We don't want to stop progress, we just want to slow it down," But their manner of slow adoption is instructive.





Read the rest for a thoughtful look at Amish techno-culture (with great photos, too).

(Via Photo by Dominik FÃ¼ssel.)

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February 11, 2009 - 12:19pm
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