Ben Waber reviewed Virtually Amish by Lindsay Ems
An Eye-Opening Ethnography
5 stars
As someone who grew up in Pennsylvania, I was a bit familiar with the Amish community coming into this book, but Ems' focus on how some of these communities interrogate and adapt new technologies gave me an incredible, unique window into an important part of that culture. This ethnography was especially fascinating because it shows how the Amish do in fact adopt new technologies, but rather than being an individual choice it is one debated within communities and always evaluated through a communal lens. Beyond that, even technologies that aren't adopted as is are often adapted to conform with the community's norms (e.g. emails by fax, solar power for hydroponic farms but not for TVs, cell phones with only calling capabilities, etc.). It was extremely interesting to see what technologies these communities did find valuable - cell phones and GPS often make the cut, but broad internet access didn't - …
As someone who grew up in Pennsylvania, I was a bit familiar with the Amish community coming into this book, but Ems' focus on how some of these communities interrogate and adapt new technologies gave me an incredible, unique window into an important part of that culture. This ethnography was especially fascinating because it shows how the Amish do in fact adopt new technologies, but rather than being an individual choice it is one debated within communities and always evaluated through a communal lens. Beyond that, even technologies that aren't adopted as is are often adapted to conform with the community's norms (e.g. emails by fax, solar power for hydroponic farms but not for TVs, cell phones with only calling capabilities, etc.). It was extremely interesting to see what technologies these communities did find valuable - cell phones and GPS often make the cut, but broad internet access didn't - since I have a hypothesis that their adoption decisions correlate with concrete value of these technologies more broadly. As a radically different alternative model to technology development and adoption, this book provides an essential provocation for how we can reimagine how we innovate. Highly recommend