I’ll be the first to admit that I’m a big nerd. I was a little slow
to give myself over to the world of electronics — I never played video
games very much, and I never used a word processor until I was a sophomore
in college — but I sure as hell made up for lost time. At this point I
can work a computer like it’s an extension of my hands. Technical glitches
are generally little more than a series of logically connected hurdles
to me, and I’ve got good intuition for technical matters that helps me
make a few bold leaps along the way. Software makes sense to me, and I
love the speedy efficiency of digital technology. I have no fear of it.
This level of comfort with modern technology extends far beyond the
workaday world of computers. Let’s be realistic: even though I may take
to computers more easily than others, if I didn’t have some degree of comfort
with them I wouldn’t really be able to hold down a job at this point, would
I? No, I really like almost all things electronic. I like having an alarm
clock that I can set by pushing a couple of buttons while I’m half asleep.
I like having voice-mail and managing it without the use of clunky machines
and crappy Radio Shack
tapes. My six-disk CD player is like having a shrine to music inside my
apartment. I pride myself on having not spoken to a bank teller in six
years except to open an account or purchase foreign currency. And don’t
even get me started on how much e-mail has kept my family
and friends together as we’ve scattered across the globe.
A friend once told me that he thought I’d be happiest if I could manage
my life while strapped to my computer all day being fed Skittles through a pneumatic tube. This is not true, and not just because the Skittles would send my blood sugar level soaring out of control.
I’m very critical of the media trend —spearheaded by technology pundits,
the advertising efforts of hi-tech companies, and everyone connected to
Wired
magazine —that would have us believe that a better world awaits us in
which we can fuse the Internet to our television programming, solve problems
at work from the beach, and satisfy all our consumer needs without ever
leaving home. I like leaving home and think people should get out more
often. You don’t have to live in a cramped New York studio to know that
there’s plenty more going on in the outside world to amuse people.
I worry about the death of printed matter that techno-doomsayers keep
threatening. I worry about becoming more isolated from people on a daily
basis than I already am. I worry about homogenization of the things I touch
and the things I see and the things I read. While I support technology
and the convenience, efficiency, and new opportunities it can offer our
culture, I worry about what it’s doing to our critical standards and our
self-reliance.
I’m a bad geek, because I also believe in lo-tech.
This attachment to the world of the analog and the physical is not such
a mystery to me. For all my enthusiasm for technology, I’ve still learned
to view the world around me from the perspective of a craftsman. I’ve spent
my whole life trying to understand how things work, how they look, and
how they feel. And I’ve tried to understand how to use my eyes, my head,
and my own two hands to make things. In the process, I’ve learned how to
appreciate the simple efficiency of a sturdy mechanical device, and the
appeal of an object that shows the signs of the wear and tear from its
past, or simply the process of how it was made.
Don’t Be Afraid!
When I was just a tyke, I followed in the footsteps of generations of children
before me and took apart anything I could once I learned how to use a screwdriver.
No appliance, toy, or device was safe from my nimble hand and my inquisitive
eye. Of course, the natural consequence to all this was that I also had
to figure out how to put everything back together before Mom got home.
I grew to love the way things moved and fit together, too, not just the
ways in which I could take them apart. Take a good look at the inner workings
of a mechanical clock sometime: that’s some pretty cool stuff. Yes, it’s
true that these experiences in covering up my tracks taught me certain
means of methodical problem-solving that help me deal with computer problems,
but they also taught me that most stuff isn’t as hard to fix as most people
believe.
If you approach it from this angle, you can see that understanding lo-tech
is about self-sufficiency. You don’t need to call a plumber because your
showerhead is leaking. You don’t need to pay for a new bookcase when you
can hang some shelves on the wall. You don’t need to pass up that fabulous
thrift store table because it has a bum leg. Hell, you don’t even need
to hire a contractor to renovate your house or apartment!
Any man or woman armed with a few tools, a healthy appreciation of lo-tech,
and a little knack for investigation can take charge of their lives and
take care of common household or automotive problems. It’s not beneath
you. Self-sufficiency doesn’t necessarily mean that you’ve built a bunker
and are still waiting for a nuclear winter. It doesn’t mean that you’re
living like a subsistence farmer. It just means that you can have the satisfaction
of knowing why something does what it does, and the satisfaction of knowing
that you can make sure it keeps doing it. No need to find a plumber at
2 a.m. or a mechanic open on Labor Day. You probably have already realized
that it makes sense to cook at home once in a while instead of paying a
fortune in restaurant checks and delivery tips: why not take the same approach
to other areas of your life?
Lo-tech self-sufficiency requires a little common sense, a little more
elbow grease, and usually a few tools. It can
give you a mighty good feeling about yourself, however. (I’m really trying
not to say “it’s empowering,” but it’s hard to ignore.) I can’t impress
upon you enough the satisfaction that can be derived from accomplishing
something with your own two hands. You don’t need to fancy yourself an
ìartistî to take a little pride in what you can create or
fix or assemble.
You Are Not Alone!
A crucial aspect of my penchant for lo-tech is the physicality of so much
of it: the bulk, the noises of the inner workings, the textures, the flaws,
and the fingerprints. You get a sense of idiosyncratic personality from
old appliances and other objects, and you can also get a sense of their
history.
When you buy a used book, for example, you can see all the evidence
of how the people who read it before you moved through it — the cracks
in the spine, the pages folded as bookmarks, maybe some underlined passages
or margin notes — that you’ll never get from a CD-ROM. If you look in
your toolbox, you can find scratches on your hammerhead and chips of paint
on your pliers and assorted nails and tacks from certain old projects that
all remind you of what has been accomplished with those tools in the past.
You leave indelible marks on the lo-tech that you use after a while, marks
that give you or other users a more visceral sense of history than you’ll
get out of a preferences or log file on your computer.
And lo-tech is often beautiful — sculptural, texturally rich, perhaps
sophisticated and elegant or perhaps crude and immediate. There can be
a sense of lost or forgotten magic in an old appliance with a faded wood
finish or opalescent Bakelite dials. Believe it or not, there was a time
when mass-production involved a greater sense of aesthetics than now, when
sleek line and matte black finish alone are supposed to suggest sophistication.
And even with objects that are purely utilitarian — what many might just
dismiss as junk — I often see as miracles of solid workmanship, or great
examples of objects made to last. It’s not such a cliché to say
that they don’t make them like they used to, because frankly — for good
or bad — they really don’t.
So don’t believe the hype. Don’t assume that new and electronic is the
shit. Take a look in your basement, attic, or local thrift store and open
yourself up to the simple pleasures of life, and learn how to be a more
tangible part of it.
There are plenty of places to go for 
