Picking and choosing.

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More than anybody is ever going to read has already been written about our culture's Faustian relationship with technology. There's no point in me adding to it. But perhaps it's worth reflecting on the fact that such a relationship isn't characteristic of all cultures. There are some that evaluate each new innovation, determining whether or not it fits their desired lifestyle, or will bring about undesirable changes in it, before deciding whether to adopt it. It's a good guess that actually, such an approach is much more prevalent that we might think, but that we become aware of it only when we see an extreme example of it. In a fascinating Wired Magazine article from 1999, Howard Rheingold reported on his visit to the Amish. He was surprised to discover that rather than rejecting technologies outright, as much of the world assumes is the case, their relationship toward technology is much more sophisticated. True, Rheingold didn't encounter cars, nor many other innovations of the twentieth century, but he saw numerous people speaking on cellular phones which, it turned out, many Amish view as a tool that contributes to their ability to maintain their lifestyle.

And perhaps because we're so accustomed to the "no questions asked" approach to adopting new technologies, we don't notice that many cultures have distinct criteria toward their adoption - even if to our eyes these criteria may seem quite strange.

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Go to: Confessions of a conservative technology freak.