Better Off: Flipping the Switch on Technology (P.S.)

by Eric Brende

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437 ratings, 3.64 average rating, 139 reviews (more data...)

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4		37%
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2		12%
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published

August 1st 2005 (first published 2004) by Harper Perennial

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Paperback, 272 pages

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0060570059 (isbn13: 9780060570057)

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What is the least we need to achieve the most? With this question in mind, MIT graduate Eric Brende flipped the switch on technology. He and his wife,

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01/27/08

Bonnyanne rated it:

Read in December, 2007

recommends it for: People who loved Walden

I fell in love with the concept of the book and the efforts to live off the grid, so I purchased it. Some of the ideas the author suggested inside were interesting. For example, I carried away the idea that I should have a manual washing machine.

Actually, that was about all I took away from the book.

The author had clearly never been out of academia before, and the book is in consequence full of exciting revelations, such as--it gets dark at night in the country! People wh...more I fell in love with the concept of the book and the efforts to live off the grid, so I purchased it. Some of the ideas the author suggested inside were interesting. For example, I carried away the idea that I should have a manual washing machine.

Actually, that was about all I took away from the book.

The author had clearly never been out of academia before, and the book is in consequence full of exciting revelations, such as--it gets dark at night in the country! People who work physically challenging jobs take lots of breaks! You can have great philosophical discussions AND weed at the same time!

Frequently, the author comes across as smug and at times he deliberately overstates the complexity of the situation, to his own benefit. (For example, he puzzles at length over the fact that he never feels completely welcome in the hyper-amish community. He suspects it's because he's Catholic and they're anabaptist, and much religious ponderance ensues--in reality, it probably had a lot more to do with the fact that the other farmers are really farmers, while said author is a grad student working on his thesis.) This technique is entertaining once, and deadly within 100 pages.

Also, I kinda felt the guy was a mook. The conclusion elaborates how off-the-grid and simply he and his family now live, but they've got the same car, phone, radio, electricity, and website that I do. I don't have a TV either--but I'm not writing a book about it. He claims he didn't even write the book on a computor, which immediately made me thing of Neal Stephenson writing his novels out longhand, but no. Apparently, in the author's mind, a computer is giving in to useless technology, but a word processor is all hard-core and rugged.

And a word to the author: YOU may be all pleased with yourself for "not having a job" and for completely stepping outside "the system", but that's just hairsplitting with definitions. Most people would consider Author, B&B Priprietor and Rickshaw Driver to be jobs.

I gave my copy away soon after I finished, because I didn't want it around to remind me of the $14 I won't ever have again, which is almost a pity. Otherwise, I could give you a taste of the sort of purple prose you may choose to sit through. But I can't, and maybe that is for the best. The author writes like Thoreau, a bit, but with more purple (if such a thing is possible).

I was hoping for an inspirational read on off-the-grid living, since I ofter live off that grid myself. But this book was not it.(less)

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04/29/07

Dennis rated it:

5/18/07- Purchased during a book bender at Powell's a few weeks back. Oddly enough, my profession is in information technology (although I'm more interested in the information side than the technology side when it comes to improving business performance.)

Looking forward to the read.

A review will follow...

6/30/07: I would recommend this book to anyone interested in contemplating their use of (addiction to?) modern "conveniences" and the personal, emot...more

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08/30/07

Jo rated it:

Read in March, 2007

While it had an interesting premise, it didn't come close to living up to my expectations. A naive city boy decides to go "off the grid" for a year, but rather than try it on his own (a la Helen and Scott Nearing), he throws in the kitsch of moving into a community of religious folks akin to the Amish or Mennonites. He drags along some chick he knows (and marries for whatever reason) and spends 200 pages poorly documenting their experience. The style was bland and tedious, though the s...more

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12/06/07

Thomas rated it:

Read in December, 2007

A good concept - one of those silly experiment for a year, back to nature books - that was pretty frustrating in the end. Very little about the actual work involved in living on an off-the-grid farm, and a terrible relationship with his wife where she was essentially disregarded throughout the book, made it much less good than I would like it to be. Sure, it made me more interested in living off the grid and growing my own food and not having a car - but I don't think I'd want to live in the s...more

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06/11/07

Anna rated it:

Terrible.
I didn't finish it. The author took a potentially interesting subject and ruined it with trite, cloying, overwriting. His descriptions of his girlfriend/wife are totally ridiculous/insulting/annoying. Dude sounds like a boring jerk, the worst kind.

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09/04/08

Ongoing Debacle rated it:

When did 3 paragraphs of "what I did on my summer vacation" turn into a genre of "goofy stuff I did for a year"? Mix a year (or 18 months) of finding one self and a word processor gets a autobiographical / self help / travelogues all in one. I'll admit, I usually mop it up and this was no exception. Take Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Mineral. A lovely, in depth, well written exploration of a year creating new life patterns. In general, the substance Better Off ...more

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09/30/07

John rated it:

Read in December, 2006

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

The starting point for this book was Eric Brende's desire to actively question a lot of things that most of us in modern America take for granted as "the way things are," particularly with regard to technology. Very much along the lines of Neil Postman in Technopoly and elsewhere, Brende recognized the unthinking acceptance of "technological progress" as a process in which as much is lost as is gained. His questions about technology led him, as he neared the end of graduate s...more The starting point for this book was Eric Brende's desire to actively question a lot of things that most of us in modern America take for granted as "the way things are," particularly with regard to technology. Very much along the lines of Neil Postman in Technopoly and elsewhere, Brende recognized the unthinking acceptance of "technological progress" as a process in which as much is lost as is gained. His questions about technology led him, as he neared the end of graduate studies at M.I.T. to take a break from school--and from electricity--for 18 months, to take a critical look through its absence at the effects of technology on our lives and consider how much technology is "enough" for a good life. To this end, Brende and his new wife went and lived among a mixed community of Amish, Mennonites, and fellow transplants from the modern world. These were largely Amish and Mennonites who thought that their own communities were moving too far from their traditional values, if that tells you anything. While there, the couple worked to make a living just as the other members of this motor-and-electricity-abstinent group did, raising their own food plus some cash crops to make their living. His book explores some of the skills he had to learn, the people he met, and the communal and religious life they shared (Brende and his wife attended some services, even though they are Catholic, while the community as a whole was some form of Anabaptists--a group much persecuted by the Catholics, and other Protestants, once upon a time).

What he found--and to be fair, this seemed to be what he expected to find--was that the technology we take for granted often takes from us as much as it gives to us. Much of our technology serves to insulate--and even isolate--us from the people around us, and our time-saving devices often don't save us that much time when you factor in everything else, including the lifestyle that's necessary to purchase and maintain these things. As he and his wife got into the rhythm of this simpler life, they found that they had more free time, closer interactions with each other and with their community, better health, and overall a higher quality of life. In the course of everyday life, they get the exercise that we go to the gym to get. One of the community's most common sayings--and no doubt an important one because of the lack of technology--was "many hands make light work." As a consequence, members of the community were constantly coming together to share labor and consequently form stronger bonds amongst themselves. Did you catch it the first time when I said "more free time"? As counter-intuitive as it might seem to us, their agrarian, low-tech lifestyle meant, for them, more free time, not less.

All of this said, I am rather more preachy about all of this than Eric Brende is. He's not trying to knock us all over the head with the Luddite stick. In fact, he currently lives in St. Louis. The experiences that formed this book were an experiment, from which he learned a good deal that he and his wife carried forward into their lives back in the modern world. Although it might do many of us some good, it's probably fair to say that Brende lived the life and wrote the book so that we don't have to--we can inspect his account and take from it what we can. I think, in fact, that we could all take a good deal from it.(less)

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01/29/08

Steve rated it:

Read in February, 2008

recommended to Steve by: Dan

Billed as a story of a couple who "flipped the switch" on technology and moved to an Amish community, giving up electricity, running water, and everything else that comes along with it. This book is an interesting look into the Mennonite community and, without question, caused me to stop and think about my day-to-day consumption of technology.

It is, however, predominately from the perspective of a man, with little mention of his wife's experience. I really would like to h...more

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03/28/09

Andrea rated it:

Read in March, 2009

recommended to Andrea by: Robert Pless
recommends it for: wanna-be-luddites

A bit indulgent, Better Off is nonetheless a compelling read for someone who dabbles in the notions of living with less and deliberate slowing down. It chronicles the eighteen month sojourn of a young MIT student and his wife in an Amish community, where they learn to make do without electricity. The purpose of their sudden immersion into luddism is to understand the impact of modern society's ubiquitous electronic gadgetry. Does it actually improve life or does it simply put us on a vicious ...more

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01/20/09

Iamthird rated it:

Read in January, 2009

Friendship, conversation, exercise, fresh air, all melded together into a single act of mutual self-forgetting. A truism in the economy of life with less technology-an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. In being slower, time is more capacious. The event is only in the moment. By speeding through life with technology, you reduce what any given moment can hold. By slowing down, you expand it.
Leisure didn't end when work began, but prevaded every moment of the day. Just as convi...more

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03/16/09

Becky rated it:

(review of isbn 0060570040)

Just finishing off my self-sufficiency expeditions, ;)

And with this one...it's somewhere between 2 and 4 stars, depending on the chapter. It's kind of "point taken, point missed". I agree that technology can and does get in the way of a good life. But does it stand to reason that that's technology's fault or the user's fault?

I liked reading about alternative communities, such as the Amish, from a technological rather than religious standpoint. That was inter...more

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05/22/09

Mo rated it:

bookshelves: homesteading-building

Read in June, 2009

I blazed through the first fifty or so pages of the book, loving the premise, and initially, loving the author's take on the subject of self-sufficiency. I felt inspired to try a hand cranked washing machine and seek out other ways to minimize my dependency on electricity and unnecessary mechanization, but then things started to head south.

Perhaps it was the discussion of religious doctrine, which was interesting from a cultural standpoint at first, but soon began to make me feel cl...more

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4 comments

01/25/08

Eva rated it:

Read in January, 2008

The subtitle of this book is "two people, one year, zero watts." This book isn't really about the process of escaping modern technology (though it definately covers it). It talks more about the comraderie involved in living in a "minimite" community. This lifestyle isn't a hardship at all, but more like freedom than being a slave to your belongings.

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05/11/07

Catherine rated it:

Read in August, 2006

Although I thought the premise for this book was intriguing, Eric Brende really went into very monotonous detail, to the point of making me want to scream, "I get it!!" I found him a bit off-putting. If this book had been edited to half of its current page count I might have found it more appealing. I'm rating this book fair, at best.

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07/07/07

Wilson rated it:

bookshelves: energynerdbooks

Read in February, 2006

recommends it for: dudes with beards

Guy decides to move in with a religious sect that doesn't like technology in order to prove that the simple life can be lived with no electricity. Girl moves with him and they marry on a whim. The cross-cutting theme is how totally awesome they are. Oh yeah, and its an autobiography.

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06/10/07

Alex rated it:

bookshelves: sociology

Read in July, 2005

pretty sweet book, the author and his wife joined a mennonite (amish) community and tried to live without technology, as a sociology experiment. it's a pretty interesting story, and makes a good point that we shouldn't rely on technology if we can help it.

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04/07/07

Geoff rated it:

bookshelves: tradedaway

Read in May, 2007

Abandoned reading the book part way through. When an author writes that he didn't have time to write what happened in a day you get the sense that the book isn't going to be stellar. And as far as I got into this one.. it wasn't.

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06/06/09

Jennifer rated it:

bookshelves: read-in-2009

Read in June, 2009

Very interesting topic. Do we have too much technology and what personal gains do you receive from "flipping the switch" off. I can see how minimizing or totally abandoning technology can make your life simpler, by no means did Eric and Mary's lives seem easier-it took a lot of hard work to do what they did. I liked the book but I really wish we got to see what Mary thought or what she was doing in her day to day.

All in all when I finished the book, I did reflect on what it...more

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04/30/09

Samantha Ebright rated it:

Read in May, 2009

I really liked the premise of the book, but almost put it down on several occasions because the author's tone was nearly intolerable. He writes like an idiot! Everything is oversimplified and drips with a smug self-satisfied I'm-smarter-than-you tone. Ugh. If I ever met him, I think I might be tempted to smack him, that's how bad it was. However, his experiences were pretty interesting to me, so I plugged away, tolerating it and gritting my teeth. I agree with other reviewers, he's so caught up ...more

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05/27/09

Daniel added it

Read in June, 2009

After the first couple of chapters i was concerned that the book might turn out to be a dry socio-political account of the academic's experience of going without the internal combustion engine and electricity. I was wrong and right at the same time. It was anything but dry. It was very interesting because his main thought wasn't necessarily conservation and environmentalism, it was the quality of life socially, so there was very little pre-judging of anything. it was a refreshing look (and e...more

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