Better Off: Flipping the Switch on Technology

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, Mary, ditched their car, electric stove, refrigerator, running water, and everything else motorized or "hooked to the grid," and spent eighteen months living in a remote community so primitive in its technology that even the Amish consider it antiquated. Better Off is the story of their real-life experiment to see whether our cell phones, wide-screen TVs, and SUVs have made life easier -- or whether life would be preferable without them. This smart, funny, and enlightening book mingles scientific analysis with the human story to demonstrate how a world free of technological excess can shrink stress -- and waistlines -- and expand happiness, health, and leisure.This P.S. edition features an extra 16 pages of insights into the book, including author interviews, recommended reading, and more. Content: Cast of neighbors. Prologue. Taking orders. Section I: Planting. Seeds of discontent -- Paring back -- Lightening up -- Artfully answering nature -- The ram -- The missing refrigerator -- The sounds of silence. Section II: Growing. Quickening -- A church meeting -- A barn raising -- The dating game -- Meet the neighbors -- Secrets and politics -- Heatstroke -- Weighing the work. Section III: Harvesting. As the pumpkins turn -- After the fall: even farmers get the blues -- Birth -- Husbandry -- Pulling in the reins -- Closing time -- Outside, and the box. Epilogue: Recipe for a leisurely, laborsaving life.