OFB: No, in most cases “Luddite” means someone who’s chosen to eschew modern technology in favor of “the old ways.” However, in ourfriendBen’s case, Luddite simply refers to total incompetence involving any technological feat more complicated than plugging in a power cord.
One thing that made an enduring impression on our friendBen was the way the characters in the film interacted with their technology. They talked to it, and it responded.
Solar technology has transformed devices from calculators to radios and flashlights to smartphone and computer chargers. Wouldn’t it pay to invest in a few? Seems like cheap insurance to us. 5. Meds. OFB and I are lucky: Vitamins and aspirin pretty much do it for us, and we can buy those in unlimited quantities if we need to stock up.
Thanks to modern technology, now we can just head to the soup aisle in our grocery and buy a box of stock. (Save those veggie scraps for the chickens or the compost pile.)
Give me a support staff of subservient children and slaves, large amounts of wealth, property, and leisure time, slower communication and transportation, and technology that depends on parts I can see and touch made of metal and leather, and I could invent the steam engine / calculus / constitutional democracy / etc. too.
Well of course there is, if you have access to technology and enough money to pay for it. As I sit here shivering—reminding myself that all this shaking is burning calories!—I think about all the incredible warming devices I’ve enjoyed in friends’ and family’s houses.
This doesn’t mean keeping up with the latest technology—after all, we’re Luddites here—but keeping up with what’s happening in your home country, in the world, in the realms of science and art and discovery and medicine and so on.
