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

by Eric Brende
Better Off: Flipping the Switch on Technology (P.S.)
book data
437 ratings, 3.64 average rating, 139 reviews (more data...)
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published
August 1st 2005 (first published 2004) by Harper Perennial

binding
Paperback, 272 pages

isbn
0060570059    (isbn13: 9780060570057)

description

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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Bonnyanne
01/27/08
Bonnyanne rated it: 1 of 5 stars

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
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Dennis
04/29/07
Dennis rated it: 4 of 5 stars

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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Jo
08/30/07
Jo rated it: 2 of 5 stars

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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Thomas
12/06/07
Thomas rated it: 2 of 5 stars

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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Anna
06/11/07
Anna rated it: 1 of 5 stars

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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Ongoing Debacle
09/04/08
Ongoing Debacle rated it: 4 of 5 stars

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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  1 comment

John
09/30/07
John rated it: 5 of 5 stars

Read in December, 2006
This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.
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Steve
01/29/08
Steve rated it: 3 of 5 stars

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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Andrea
03/28/09
Andrea rated it: 3 of 5 stars

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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Iamthird
01/20/09
Iamthird rated it: 3 of 5 stars

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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Becky
03/16/09
Becky rated it: 3 of 5 stars (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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Mo
05/22/09
Mo rated it: 2 of 5 stars

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

Eva
01/25/08
Eva rated it: 3 of 5 stars

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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Catherine
05/11/07
Catherine rated it: 2 of 5 stars

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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Wilson
07/07/07
Wilson rated it: 2 of 5 stars

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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Alex
06/10/07
Alex rated it: 4 of 5 stars

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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Geoff
04/07/07
Geoff rated it: 1 of 5 stars

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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Jennifer
06/06/09
Jennifer rated it: 3 of 5 stars

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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Samantha Ebright
04/30/09
Samantha Ebright rated it: 3 of 5 stars

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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Daniel
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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