Minutes of the Lead Pencil Club: Second Thoughts on the Electronic Revolution

by Lead Pencil Club, Bill Henderson (Editor)

This collection will reveal to you what electronic madness has wrought in our lives and society. Through letters, essays, news clips, poems, cartoons, and testimonials, the members of the Lead Pencil Club suggest how you can restore mindfulness, sanity, and simplicity to your life and the lives of your children. Have you just junked your most recent, instantly obsolete, computer? Are you thinking of buying your first computer? Do you find that your business and personal life have been invaded by a bewildering array of electronics--from voice and E-mail to faxes and televisions with hundreds of channels to the wildly hyped Internet and World Wide Web? Do you suffer from info-overload? Do you sometimes think we have lost our souls in a constant quest for speed, entertainment, and convenience? The Minutes of the Lead Pencil Club is a dynamic record of an ongoing meeting of minds from as far away as Tasmania, India, and Austria and as close to home as California and New York. Contributors include Russell Baker, Neil Postman, David Gelernter, Wendell Berry, Sven Birkerts, Mark Slouka, Clifford Stoll, Doris Grumbach, Andre Codrescu, and others, with comments by John Updike, Robert Hughes, Henry David Thoreau, E. Annie Proulx, Alvin Toffler, Dave Barry, Edmund Morris, Farley Mowat, Ted Koppel, Nicholson Baker, Paul Goodman, Gary Snyder, Kirkpatrick Sale, and Lawrence Ferlinghetti, plus letters and news items from around the world.

Genres: Nonfiction, Philosophy

235 pages, Paperback

First published April 17, 1996

Reviews

[erica · Rating 1 out of 5]

a book about technology written in the mid-nineties is a bit dated, to say the least.

it definitely echoed my BS excuses for not having a computer of mine own and had some valid points, but only made me feel lamer for hoping that there really might be a lead pencil club i could join.

and yes, brett, it was uber condescending and often focused on how pathetic internet porn is -- which isn't exactly a revolutionary new idea.

[Marija · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lots of food for thought in deciding how much of technology we should allow into our lives. Unfortunately a lot of this book is dated. Electronic bulletin boards seem quaint in comparison to the ubiquitousness of being connected 24/7 now.

[Terry · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Letters, essays, cartoons, and commentary on how and why to live contraption-free in a computer-crazed world." Jerome Stern's "Booklove" was especially fine.