Why I'm Not Going To Buy A Computer

Wendell Berry

Like almost everybody else, I am hooked to the energy corporations, which I do not admire. I hope to become less hooked to them. In my work, I try to be as little hooked to them as possible. As a farmer, I do almost all of my work with horses, not machines. As a writer, I work with a pencil or a pen and a piece of paper.

My wife types my work on a Royal standard typewriter bought new in 1956, and as good now as it was then. As she types, she sees things that are wrong, and marks them with small checks in the margins. She's my best critic because she's the one most familiar with my usual errors and weaknesses. She also understands, sometimes better than I do, what ought to be said. We have, I think, a literary cottage industry that works well and pleasantly. I don't see anything wrong with it.

A number of people, by now, have told me that I could greatly improve things by buying a computer. My answer is that I'm not going to do it. I have several reasons, and they're good ones.

The first is the one I mentioned at the beginning.

I would hate to think that my work as a writer could not be done without a direct dependence on strip-mined coal. How could I write conscientiously against the rape of nature if I were, in the act of writing, involved even indirectly in the rape? For the same reason, it matters to me that my writing is done in the daytime, without electric light.

I do not admire computer manufacturers much more than I admire the energy industries.

I have seen their advertisements, attempting to seduce struggling or failing farmers into believing that they can solve their problems by buying yet another piece of expensive equipment. I'm familiar with their propaganda campaigns that have put computers into public schools that don't even have enough books. That computers are expected to become as common as TV sets in the future doesn't impress me or matter to me. I don't own a TV set. I don't see that computers are bringing us even one step nearer to anything that does matter to me: peace, economic justice, ecological health, political honesty, family and community stability, good work.

What would a computer cost me? More money, for one thing, than I can afford, and more than I wish to pay to people whom I do not admire.

But the cost would not be just monetary. It's well understood that technological innovation always requires the discarding of the old model—the old model in this case being not just our old Royal standard, but my wife, my critic, my closest reader, my fellow worker. Thus (and I think this is typical of present-day technological innovation), what would be replaced would be not only something, but somebody. In order to be technologically up-to-date as a writer, I would have to sacrifice an association that I depend on and treasure.

My final and perhaps my best reason for not owning a computer is that I do not wish to fool myself.

I disbelieve, and therefore strongly resent, the claim that I or anybody else could write better or more easily with a computer than with a pencil. Let's be scientific about this: When someone has used a computer to write work that is demonstrably superior to Dante's, and when this superiority is proven to be due to the use of a computer, then I will speak of computers with a more respectful tone of voice. But I still won't buy one.

To make myself as plain as I can, I should give my standards for adopting any technological innovation in my own work. They are as follows:

1. The new tool should be cheaper than the one it replaces.

2. It should be at least as small in size as the one it replaces.

3. It should do work that is clearly and demonstrably better than the tool it replaces.

4. It should use less energy than the tool it replaces.

5. If possible, it should use some form of non-industrial energy; such as solar energy or that of the body.

6. A person of ordinary intelligence should be able to repair it, provided he or she has the necessary tools.

7. It should be possible to purchase and repair it near home.

8. It should come from a small, privately owned shop that will take it back for maintenance and repair.

9. It should not replace or disrupt anything good that already exists, and this includes family and community relationships.