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Why would I care about some anti-tech person? As someone who grew up in a rural area, with family that ran a hobby farm, descended from sharecroppers, there's n

Why would I care about some anti-tech person? As someone who grew up in a rural area, with family that ran a hobby farm, descended from sharecroppers, there's nothing to romanticize. Edit: but really, I can't see any possible reason to read this person's writing over, say, something about Norman Borlaug. Never heard of this person before now, HN never contextualizes obits, didn't come here just to fight.

maliker 1mo ago
Yes, like every homesteader, Berry is a bit of a LARPer. Even his sparse lifestyle relies on a lot of products and services developed in technological society. He's still a good read though.
- jollyllama 1mo ago
  [flagged]
  - buildsjets 1mo ago
    I hate people, but I love gatherings. Ironic, isn't it?
  - ChickeNES 1mo ago
    I thought HN discourages canned responses like yours? Do you have a response to the actual dependency argument?
- grigri907 1mo ago
  I mean, he was a career farmer (and writer and teacher) not a homesteader. He had his pet issues with technology but he never advocated for isolating oneself from society. I wouldn't call it LARPing if someone just figures out the life he wants to live and then does it for 90 some-odd years.
  - hunterpayne 1mo ago
    I grew up on a farm about 100 miles from where this guy lived. I have never heard of him until now. The type of farming he did wasn't used on working farms since before he (1930s) was born. And there aren't any working farms along the Kentucky river. So yes, he was a LARPer. PS Its distilleries that are along the river and the land there is far too hilly to grow row crops.
    - ChickeNES 1mo ago
      Funnily enough, in 2022 he spoke against a 25-warehouse bourbon campus being built nearby, saying the land was being sacrificed to “tourism and whiskey.” Weird way to support local industry (and his local community) in Kentucky!
      - Guthwine 1mo ago
        Berry was much more concerned with the health of small-scale family farms and the land than supporting a 600-acre tourism complex.
    - Guthwine 1mo ago
      Berry, besides actively having a farm in Henry County, raised money, provided education and resources for local farmers in the community + around the region via The Wendell Berry Center / Our Home Place Meat, others. To say he wasn't practicing what he preached is disingenuous. He did a lot of great work.
unregistereddev 1mo ago
I'm actually with you. Having read some of Wendell Berry's work, he comes across to me as an impractical dreamer. Not only do his ideals not scale to support humanity, but he refuses to acknowledge the external impact of his decisions. Henry David Thoreau's writings about self-reliance are harder to tolerate once you learn that he was supported by family. Yes he lived in the woods, but his mother literally brought him food. In the same vein, Wendell Berry's writings about technology are harder to tolerate once you learn that he made his wife type up his manuscripts for him to be sent on to publishers. It's worth having deep conversations about the impact and value of technology in modern society. It's also hard to take a sermon seriously when it's being preached by a hypocritical curmudgeon.
- ChickeNES 1mo ago
  > It's worth having deep conversations about the impact and value of technology in modern society. It's also hard to take a sermon seriously when it's being preached by a hypocritical curmudgeon. Yes! Making informed decisions about technology is vital, but when his writings appear to boil down to "technology bad, old things good", well, why bother to even engage when there are better thinkers out there?
  - mbeddedartistry 1mo ago
    You have never heard of him before now, but feel confident in boiling down his large body of writing and laying judgment on the quality of his thought?
    - ChickeNES 1mo ago
      Yes, and I have seen nothing in this thread, nor on Wikipedia, to change my mind
      - anthonyrstevens 1mo ago
        The point of this thread/discussion is not simply to render a snap uninformed judgement on the (made-up, reductionist) premise of "technology bad, old things good".
jawilson2 1mo ago
> HN never contextualizes obits This is my biggest gripe with HN. You'll see a headline like "Norville Grub has died" and you look him up and he wrote a Unix timestamp parser in the 80's or something. This is pretty much the only time I wish we had moderators; it isn't that difficult to write "Norville Grub, original Unix timestamp parser author, has died". I pretty much skip every obit unless I recognize the name.
- dang 1mo ago
  It's good for HN readers to have to work a little. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=%22work%20a%20little%22%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...
  - ChickeNES 1mo ago
    Might I request adding that to the FAQ as well? I do understand the reason, while disagreeing :P
    - dang 1mo ago
      What would the question be? We'd have to make the scope broader than just "X has died".
  - jawilson2 1mo ago
    1. That link is blocked on my office network, so not sure how to respond. 2. I have enough attention thieves in my life to have to "work" to determine if I should read it.
- ChickeNES 1mo ago
  I also have the same gripe with the CHM's youtube channel for the same reason. Not everyone they interview is known by name, in fact, most are not.
kulahan 1mo ago
Why should I care about tech? As someone who grew up in a city, with a family that ran a business building mainframes back in the early computer days, there is nothing to romanticize. That’s why your comment is not particularly well-received. I’ve had the exact opposite experience as you, I’ve seen overwhelming sadness and misery and depression spawned from a tech-filled life. I hardly can count the few crazy deep into tech who seem at peace simultaneously. So many people leave tech for something more meaningful is almost a meme at this point. The only defense I ever hear is “well if people would just…” but people DON’T just. They never just. They never have just, and they never will just. In nature, this works out just fine, because there are many natural guardrails. Don’t piss off the tiger. Guardrail: it eats you. Don’t gorge on your fish pond. Guardrail: you deplete and starve. In society, there are no guardrails because individuals can have massively outsized impacts. One man can start a construction project that depletes his pond, then deplete 40 other ponds refilling his own.
- ChickeNES 1mo ago
  > Why should I care about tech? Because we're on a news discussion site about technology, run by a technology incubator, frequented by those who work with and use technology? More substantively, you don't have to care about technology, but if you're arguing that technological society makes people miserable, that's an empirical claim. > As someone who grew up in a city, with a family that ran a business building mainframes back in the early computer days, there is nothing to romanticize. I agree! Human labor should not be romanticized. > So many people leave tech for something more meaningful is almost a meme at this point. Anecdotes are not data. Can you actually show this? > In society, there are no guardrails because individuals can have massively outsized impacts. One man can start a construction project that depletes his pond, then deplete 40 other ponds refilling his own. Society has guardrails: laws, property rights, regulation, liability, prices, taxes, permits, and collective institutions. You seem to be taking an example of an externality and then twisting it into an argument that these don't guardrails don't exist, when they plainly do. And I'm not sure “deplete your food supply and starve” is a very compelling example of nature's superior guardrails. We have built those social guardrails precisely because we'd prefer to prevent the damage rather than have starvation enforce the constraint afterward.

maliker 1mo ago

Yes, like every homesteader, Berry is a bit of a LARPer. Even his sparse lifestyle relies on a lot of products and services developed in technological society. He's still a good read though.

jollyllama 1mo ago
[flagged]
- buildsjets 1mo ago
  I hate people, but I love gatherings. Ironic, isn't it?
- ChickeNES 1mo ago
  I thought HN discourages canned responses like yours? Do you have a response to the actual dependency argument?
grigri907 1mo ago
I mean, he was a career farmer (and writer and teacher) not a homesteader. He had his pet issues with technology but he never advocated for isolating oneself from society. I wouldn't call it LARPing if someone just figures out the life he wants to live and then does it for 90 some-odd years.
- hunterpayne 1mo ago
  I grew up on a farm about 100 miles from where this guy lived. I have never heard of him until now. The type of farming he did wasn't used on working farms since before he (1930s) was born. And there aren't any working farms along the Kentucky river. So yes, he was a LARPer. PS Its distilleries that are along the river and the land there is far too hilly to grow row crops.
  - ChickeNES 1mo ago
    Funnily enough, in 2022 he spoke against a 25-warehouse bourbon campus being built nearby, saying the land was being sacrificed to “tourism and whiskey.” Weird way to support local industry (and his local community) in Kentucky!
    - Guthwine 1mo ago
      Berry was much more concerned with the health of small-scale family farms and the land than supporting a 600-acre tourism complex.
  - Guthwine 1mo ago
    Berry, besides actively having a farm in Henry County, raised money, provided education and resources for local farmers in the community + around the region via The Wendell Berry Center / Our Home Place Meat, others. To say he wasn't practicing what he preached is disingenuous. He did a lot of great work.

unregistereddev 1mo ago

I'm actually with you. Having read some of Wendell Berry's work, he comes across to me as an impractical dreamer. Not only do his ideals not scale to support humanity, but he refuses to acknowledge the external impact of his decisions. Henry David Thoreau's writings about self-reliance are harder to tolerate once you learn that he was supported by family. Yes he lived in the woods, but his mother literally brought him food. In the same vein, Wendell Berry's writings about technology are harder to tolerate once you learn that he made his wife type up his manuscripts for him to be sent on to publishers. It's worth having deep conversations about the impact and value of technology in modern society. It's also hard to take a sermon seriously when it's being preached by a hypocritical curmudgeon.

ChickeNES 1mo ago
> It's worth having deep conversations about the impact and value of technology in modern society. It's also hard to take a sermon seriously when it's being preached by a hypocritical curmudgeon. Yes! Making informed decisions about technology is vital, but when his writings appear to boil down to "technology bad, old things good", well, why bother to even engage when there are better thinkers out there?
- mbeddedartistry 1mo ago
  You have never heard of him before now, but feel confident in boiling down his large body of writing and laying judgment on the quality of his thought?
  - ChickeNES 1mo ago
    Yes, and I have seen nothing in this thread, nor on Wikipedia, to change my mind
    - anthonyrstevens 1mo ago
      The point of this thread/discussion is not simply to render a snap uninformed judgement on the (made-up, reductionist) premise of "technology bad, old things good".

jawilson2 1mo ago

> HN never contextualizes obits This is my biggest gripe with HN. You'll see a headline like "Norville Grub has died" and you look him up and he wrote a Unix timestamp parser in the 80's or something. This is pretty much the only time I wish we had moderators; it isn't that difficult to write "Norville Grub, original Unix timestamp parser author, has died". I pretty much skip every obit unless I recognize the name.

dang 1mo ago
It's good for HN readers to have to work a little. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=%22work%20a%20little%22%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...
- ChickeNES 1mo ago
  Might I request adding that to the FAQ as well? I do understand the reason, while disagreeing :P
  - dang 1mo ago
    What would the question be? We'd have to make the scope broader than just "X has died".
- jawilson2 1mo ago
  1. That link is blocked on my office network, so not sure how to respond. 2. I have enough attention thieves in my life to have to "work" to determine if I should read it.
ChickeNES 1mo ago
I also have the same gripe with the CHM's youtube channel for the same reason. Not everyone they interview is known by name, in fact, most are not.

kulahan 1mo ago

Why should I care about tech? As someone who grew up in a city, with a family that ran a business building mainframes back in the early computer days, there is nothing to romanticize. That’s why your comment is not particularly well-received. I’ve had the exact opposite experience as you, I’ve seen overwhelming sadness and misery and depression spawned from a tech-filled life. I hardly can count the few crazy deep into tech who seem at peace simultaneously. So many people leave tech for something more meaningful is almost a meme at this point. The only defense I ever hear is “well if people would just…” but people DON’T just. They never just. They never have just, and they never will just. In nature, this works out just fine, because there are many natural guardrails. Don’t piss off the tiger. Guardrail: it eats you. Don’t gorge on your fish pond. Guardrail: you deplete and starve. In society, there are no guardrails because individuals can have massively outsized impacts. One man can start a construction project that depletes his pond, then deplete 40 other ponds refilling his own.

ChickeNES 1mo ago
> Why should I care about tech? Because we're on a news discussion site about technology, run by a technology incubator, frequented by those who work with and use technology? More substantively, you don't have to care about technology, but if you're arguing that technological society makes people miserable, that's an empirical claim. > As someone who grew up in a city, with a family that ran a business building mainframes back in the early computer days, there is nothing to romanticize. I agree! Human labor should not be romanticized. > So many people leave tech for something more meaningful is almost a meme at this point. Anecdotes are not data. Can you actually show this? > In society, there are no guardrails because individuals can have massively outsized impacts. One man can start a construction project that depletes his pond, then deplete 40 other ponds refilling his own. Society has guardrails: laws, property rights, regulation, liability, prices, taxes, permits, and collective institutions. You seem to be taking an example of an externality and then twisting it into an argument that these don't guardrails don't exist, when they plainly do. And I'm not sure “deplete your food supply and starve” is a very compelling example of nature's superior guardrails. We have built those social guardrails precisely because we'd prefer to prevent the damage rather than have starvation enforce the constraint afterward.