Nine Standards
1. The new tool should be cheaper than the one it replaces. 2. It should be at least as small in scale as the one it replaces. 3. It should do work that is clearly and demonstrably better than the one it replaces. 4. It should use less energy than the one it replaces. 5. If possible, it should use some form of solar energy, such as that of the body. 6. It should be repairable by a person of ordinary intelligence, provided that he or she has the necessary tools. 7. It should be purchasable and repairable as near to home as possible. 8. It should come from a small, privately owned shop or store that will take it back for maintenance and repair. 9. It should not replace or disrupt anything good that already exists, and this includes family and community relationships.
, Why I Am Not Going to Buy a Computer (collected in What Are People For?) (1987) · Excerpt
Berry published this list in a 1987 essay explaining why he would not purchase a computer for his writing. He worked in pencil on paper, passing finished pages to his wife, who typed them on a Royal standard typewriter. The essay drew heated criticism from readers who found his stance romantic, obstinate, or simply wrong. And history largely bore them out: computers became extraordinary instruments for writers, enabling kinds of revision, collaboration, and circulation that Berry’s pencil could never match.
Yet the list endures, particularly the ninth criterion, where the question widens from efficiency to something like ecology: a new tool “should not replace or disrupt anything good that already exists.” The word that arrests me is “good.” Berry seems to assume that our existing arrangements carry a significance we may not recognize, one that becomes visible only after it has been displaced. The long walk that quietly solves a problem, or the productive frustration of a slow afternoon, rarely survive a cost-benefit analysis, yet their absence can be felt for years.
Most of us take up new instruments the way we walk into weather: because they’ve arrived and everyone else is adjusting. Berry’s criteria, whatever we make of his conclusions, belong to someone who believed that adopting a tool is a genuine decision, not simply an inevitability. He was probably wrong about computers. Whether he was wrong about the habit of questioning is a different matter, and a harder one.