Technology on the Trail

As an MIT alum, Eric Brende understands how technology can be used on a daily basis in order to influence society and promote efficiency. As a man who went “off the grid” for a year living in a town where the people living in the town would consider the Amish as advanced, Eric Brende discovers how to survive independent of technology often taken for granted. Brende’s novel, Better off Flipping the Switch on Technology, explores now technology can positively and negatively affect an individual’s life.

Experienced vs Inexperienced

When Eric and his wife first move to the “unplugged” town, they are inexperienced in terms of not using technology and going “off the grid”. Their new lifestyle drastically changes how they learn how to perform everyday tasks such as cooking (since they do not own a refrigerator and must learn how to cook food that can be preserved for long amounts of time), obtaining drinkable water/washing dishes/doing laundry (since there is no running water), and farming as a means to earn a living and eat since there isn’t a nearby grocery store nearby. Instead of searching how to do something online and receiving an answer instantaneously, Eric and his wife learn through trial and error and by receiving advice and knowledge from experience of the locals. While performing a task without the use constant use of technology often takes longer and may seem tedious, Brende views these tasks as insightful and rewarding since tasks are now dependent on the human rather than on technology.

Viewpoints on Technology

Throughout the novel, the author describes this certain period in his life as a way for him to step away from the use of technology since he feels as if it is controlling his life. The author generally focuses on the negative aspects of technology rather than the positive. Such negative aspects of technology include: how technology isolates you from every day interaction with people, how you spend so much time with technology it’s almost as if you’re in a daze (driving hours to get to work), and how you become so dependent on technology you never recognize that certain tasks can be done without technology.

While the author constantly explains negative aspects of technology, he rarely focuses on how technology can be beneficial. For instance, with technology, it has become easier to connect with people that you’ve lost communication with faster (ex: Facebook over writing letters). However, messaging a person on social media instead of contacting a person by writing a letter is deemed less personal by society. Additionally, farming (what Brende spent many hours during the day completing while “unplugged”) can be done much more efficiently using technology. By spending less time farming during the day with the use of technology, Brende could have had more leisure time to relax and “have fun”. Throughout the novel, Brende mentions how people can live without luxuries such as heating, indoor plumbing, and electricity but fails to focus on how much easier an individual’s living arrangements becomes with the use of technology. By not having to worry about trivial things such as washing dishes without running water, individuals have more time to complete other tasks rather than attacking tasks that can be completed quicker with the use of technology.

Machines vs Tools

In the community that the author is living in for a year, locals only use the “technology” that was used by people as described in The Bible. They generally refuse to use technology present today. However, why is it acceptable for the people in the community to use the technology from the past rather than the technology of the present? The main distinction between the two was that the technology of the past are considered to be “tools” rather than “machines”. Brende describes the difference by deciding that people dependent on machines, “besides often depriving their uses of skills and physical exercise, they created new and artificial demands – for fuel, space, money and time. These in turn crowded out other important human pursuits, like involvement in family and community, or even the process of thinking itself. The very act of accepting the machine was becoming automatic.” Tools were considered an object that would be used to help perform a certain task whereas machines were objects that were used to perform a task quicker without understanding how to perform the actual task.

Communication Without the Use of Technology

The people in the town the author and his wife live in work as an interdependent community. Overall, people within the community interact with each other in order for all of them to be successful (helping with farming, building, and bringing food to each other). They often use “working” as a time for people to talk to each other about topics ranging from trivial gossip to insightful commentary about personal beliefs. The author uses this time in order to reflect on how the lack of technology affects his performance on everyday tasks and gain experiences from his more knowledgeable neighbors in order to become successful by learning farming and living tricks and cooking tips in order to accomplish tasks quicker or easier.

Relevance to Technology on the Trail

Reading about Eric Brende’s experiences and insights through “flipping the switch on technology” is highly relevant to Technology on the Trail. Not unlike the people from the community that Brende and his wife lived in, many hikers view technology as a taboo concept use excessively. For Technology on the Trail, it is important to research specifically what people determine as useful and unnecessary to bring on the Trail. Additionally, it is important to research and discover how to promote the use of technology on the trail without hindering a hiker’s natural experience on the trail. Not unlike Eric Brende learning how to farm, cook, and live without technology, I am interested in exploring if there is a way for technology to be used in order to share the experiences of a seasoned hiker in order to benefit less-experienced hikers on and off the trail.