Newly married, Eric and Mary Brende — he an MIT grad, she an accountant — set out in 1992 to test his theory that a world supposedly made easier by time- and labor-saving devices is in fact one in which machinery and technology enslave their human creators. He suspected technology doesn’t save time but instead makes it seem to speed by frantically and actually increases labor — forcing us to work harder and faster and farther from home, in part to pay for devices such as cars and computers that promise to give us more time and ease.
And so the couple vowed to spend 18 months in a small heartland community that has divorced itself from computers, cell phones, TVs, cars, microwaves, electricity. This tiny community of farming families is not Amish, Anabaptist or Mennonite, though many of its members have been part of such sects. To protect them from unwanted publicity, Brende dubs them “Minimites” in his new book, “Better Off: Flipping the Switch on Technology” (HarperCollins, 233 pages, $24.95). These were, he writes, “mainstream Americans . . . bearing a variety of religious viewpoints, joined by one converging aim: to reclaim their lives from machines.”
Largely, these farmers do their work by hand and do it in a neighborly way in which “many hands make work light.” Barn-raisings, bartering, communal threshing days and a bedrock commitment to sharing and helping bring them together, and the community thrives, free of debt. To be sure, the Brendes enjoyed good luck in their transition from city dwellers to Minimite villagers. They rented an airy bungalow with a welcoming porch and a gleaming stove that served for heating and cooking. Their first cash crops of pumpkins and sorghum, grown on rented land, made a profit. Soon the Brendes were experiencing the slow wheel of the seasons, appreciating star-bedecked night skies and, with the help of midwives, birthing a son.
When the Brendes left, they did a stint back in Boston, where Eric wrote the thesis that became this gracefully written and inspirational book. Eventually they and their kids wound up in St. Louis, making soap, running a small bed-and-breakfast and driving a rickshaw.
