The Case for Technological Foot-Dragging 

I was due to be a Gen X-er. By waiting a week past my due date, I not only lost my father his 1980 tax deduction but also became a Millennial. Not that being born in the first few days of a sociologically designated generation (or claiming a cool label like “Cusper” or “Xennial”) is really that much of a distinction. But I have come to realize that entering one’s generational cohort at the beginning of an arbitrary twenty-year span means not being quite so wholly subsumed in the zeitgeist as are one’s slightly younger peers.  

Add to that a family whose scant middle-class means and slight Luddite tendencies meant that we were never technological early adopters. Multiply that by a choice to homeschool when such an election still produced a marked cultural wince. Subtract any culturally defiant choices such as those of my friends who did not even own a television. It totals a childhood not outside the mainstream culture—certainly not paddling against it—but holding water as the cultural drift moved us all along.  

From the vantage point of midlife, I am deeply grateful for an upbringing that walked through the ’80s and ’90s with a good deal of cultural foot-dragging, but I have also come to believe that this sort of cautious, reluctant, belated travel through innovation is beneficial to everyone in every generation at every time. Most of us cannot drop off the grid, but almost all of us can wait a little longer before buying into new technologies for our homes and families. These small “not yet” choices help to form us and our children into more intentional and humane people, better able to use technology than to be used by it, and to assess the loss that accompanies technological advance as well as the obvious gains.  

But Do We Really Need It? 

I can remember the time before my family bought our first microwave. Or television with a remote control. Or cordless phone. Or VCR. Or computer. Moreover, in most cases, I also recall a vague, childish knowledge of the grownup discussions going on for months before such innovations were ceremoniously purchased and ensconced in our home. In the haziness of memory at least, I am aware of a prevailing ethos that we didn’t really need that new technology, not in any pressing way.  

True, even in the ’90s of my youth, I felt the pressure of consumerism. I was aware that apparently kids were supposed to resent not having the latest and greatest gadgets due to the fuddy-duddiness of their parents, but such feelings remained wholly alien to me. In our house, it was simply a kid’s duty to get up off the couch and manually press the keypad on our boxy Zenith television to change the channel. (The list of channels that worked, along with optimal antenna direction for each, was taped nearby.) Hey, we were getting to watch television, right? Why complain?  

What was the point of a cordless phone? My mom was adroit at navigating the kitchen, dining room, and even into the living room without tripping over the extra-long 50´ harvest gold coil-cord of our rotary phone. Nor did it ever run low on battery—as its tail-less replacement all too often did.  

Inevitably, my family did set aside the outmoded and adopt the newfangled, but not without a long season of hesitation over what benefit the update actually brought, especially considering that it always came with a price tag.  

Gaining by Doing Without 

As far as I can tell, this childhood in the cultural slow lane was not a unified parental project to take a stand against consumerism or technology. It was the accumulation of many particular, intentional choices. And yet, for me, those individual decisions melded into a comprehensive view of life.  

My default in considering a new purchase, a new technology, or a new cure-all solution is to wait and see. I’ve come to adopt the frugal housewife’s mantra—“Use it up, wear it out, make do, do without”—and espousing this motto of anti-consumerism brings me more peace and joy than abolishing all of my inconveniences. It is the peace of not spending money, of not adding to my multitude of possessions, and of not inviting unintended consequences. It is the joy of exerting my human capabilities and discovering how much I can do with very little.  

I do find it helpful to articulate for my own children the deep value of such delayed gratification. When they discover the latest thing they would like to buy or consume, I share their interest and suggest they write it on a Christmas list. When they see peers with laptops, iPads, or smartphones, I can honestly say, “when you’re older, we can consider that.”  

Together, we’re living out a real-life marshmallow test. I’ve had a few more years’ experience than my children, but each day is a new trial for all of us in accepting delayed gratification. The rewards of saying no to the new for now are too great not to bestow on my children: self-control, mindfulness, gratitude, distinguishing between needs and luxuries. Most crucially, the act of doing without something we could have sets us up for peaceful passage through the times when we must do without something we cannot have. 

Nameless Losses 

Wendell Berry’s recent death has made this truth all the clearer for me. One of the most lucid, erudite American writers of the last century, Berry saw past the horizon of modern gadgetry and luxury to the deep and disturbing implications of our bigger-is-better, centralized, mechanized, consumerist social choices. Berry lived out his convictions in part by refusing to purchase a computer, instead writing out his prolific manuscripts in longhand before having them prepared on a typewriter.  

Having done nearly all my long-form writing by computer for the last thirty years or so, I doubt I could make the same stand. Certainly, the adoption of the computer as my authorial tool has shaped the character of my composing, revising, and publishing. Whether this has been for better or worse may be impossible to determine, but the technology has changed me, and I have lost something in the process. Of this, there is no doubt.  

Such is always the case with innovation. With gain comes loss. The trick of it all is that our attention is so drawn to the gain that we miss the sleight of hand by which our losses are shuffled under the table, out of mind, into the realm of cultural unimaginability. Those first in line to buy their tickets to the magic show of new tech will almost inevitably be dazzled by its novel conjuring. Though we might be best off staying away from magic shows altogether, at least those who hold out until the big headliner becomes the bargain matinee stand a better chance of enjoying the entertainment without being swindled by it.  

Taking My Stand in the Twenty-First Century 

Whether due to my familial acculturation or to my own personal peculiarities, my technological skepticism has persisted into the twenty-first century. My cellphone adoption came only in the mid-2000s at the insistence of extended family who could no longer imagine a twenty-something attempting a road trip without such a device. And although I’ve had to update a couple times by force of mobile network limitations, I remain one of the approximately half-dozen people in the world who still do not own a smartphone.  

With each passing year this choice becomes slightly more inconvenient for me, slightly more baffling to the world at large. And yet, somehow it also increases my determination that on this path I am ready to dig in my heels rather than just drag my feet. The minor frustration of not being able to click the link in the automatically generated text reminder from my dentist’s office reminds me of what I am gaining: more time looking at my children and the real world, more momentum to pick up a real book and read, less servitude to the black mirror that is the smartphone. 

Foregoing the Future’s Promises  

As the centrifugal force of AI now pulls us into its vortex of innumerable intangible innovations, the urgency to resist early adoption must become stronger. Perhaps it has always been true that innovators only half realize the implications of their inventions, but rarely have those innovators said as much publicly. It is as if the whole of humanity is squinting at a vanishing point, trying to make out the shape and magnitude of the looming vagueness. Now, before the storm arrives in full force, is the time to ask ourselves: Are we going to run toward that horizon, or are we going to hold our ground until we see more clearly what it portends? 

The action called for is small resistance. The place to start is where you are. If you own a smartphone—as you probably do—it would take a great effort of will and change of life to trade it in for a dumb phone. Maybe you are ready for that momentous detransition. But probably not. So don’t. Go ahead and keep your smartphone, but draw your line somewhere.  

Look around and assess what devices you have not yet adopted. Assess what devices you do have. Assess what they contribute to your life, how they affect the human relationships in your household, how much you use them. And then take a deep breath and honestly consider how much they use you.  

If you are ready to disown Alexa and let her make her own way in the metaverse, by all means, do it. If your life is so entwined with your devices that you cannot renounce any one of them without losing something essential, then at least plant your feet where you are and face the future with a “no thank you” on your lips.  

Resisting immediate innovation becomes easier once you begin. There is an inertia that comes with skeptically assessing new technologies rather than immediately adding them to your personal canon. It is a practice that will reinforce itself every time you choose not to use a certain technology. And you do need practice.  

The difficulty in the coming AI revolution is that choices may not mean refusing a particular device, but rather, refusing a certain function of a device. It is morally simple to eschew using AI to write something for which I claim authorship but devilishly easy to justify using its powers as my research assistant. Moreover, the lines between technological functions become blurrier as AI claims more ground. I may want to avoid using AI altogether, but does scrolling past the prominent AI summary of my Google search count when my eyes have already glanced at its tempting contents? It is hard to take a stand where the ground is both shifting and invisible.  

Thus, the more urgent is the need to slow our technological momentum. Whether this means decelerating from a run to a walk, dragging your feet, or taking your stand in the technological landscape, you will have to embrace inconvenience in the process. This partnership is uncomfortable for American pragmatists, but when we accept inconvenience, we may find it makes a better friend than an enemy.  

And this essential shift reveals the stakes of the journey. Technology has always claimed our treasure, but as it increasingly claims our attention also, the need for resistance takes on a spiritual dimension. We give our attention to what we love. If we attend to what we do not love, or want to love, we do not negate love’s nature but change its object. Where is your attention? There your heart is also. Let’s travel slowly, forgoing the full pantheon of technological possibilities so that we may keep our hearts in the real world. 

Image licensed via Adobe Stock.