Title: Minutes of the Lead Pencil Club
Edited by: Bill Henderson
Year 1996
Publisher: Pushcart Press
Price: $22.00 US
Review by: Michael Agger
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It has been a good year for the Luddites, or more correctly, the "Neo-Luddites." As the Internet continues to be piped into more and more schools, homes, and businesses, a collective cry of "what are we doing with this technology!" has risen in the heartland. Unfortunately, the pundits who question the Internet frequently lack a sense of humor, and their all-out efforts to deride this new technology have made them seem merely grumpy and obsolete. The most intelligent critique I've read of our emerging information society is the collection of essays, news clippings, and quotations edited by Bill Henderson titled The Minutes of the Lead Pencil Club.Founded in 1993, the Lead Pencil Club is an informal, international organization dedicated to raising awareness of how computers and other electronic inventions influence our lives. The club makes no bones about the fact that it regards the Internet as a colossal waste of time, and worse, a harmful distraction from the essentials of learning, community, and self-awareness. But, the essays in this book do not indulge in nostalgia for the unwired past. The writers accept that the Internet, the fax machine, and the cellular phone have arrived and there is no turning back. Knowing this, they move beyond judgment and delve into how this technology alters the way we live and how we might intelligently resist it. Whether you love or loathe the Internet, there is no denying that the virtue of improved information systems has gone unquestioned by society at large. This collection of essays offers an important counter-voice to the love of speed, information, and accessibility that is currently paramount.
Contributors to the book include noted writers Sven Birkets and Wendell Berry, but my favorite essay is written by Sanja Brizic Ilic. Ilic discusses how the civil war in the former Yugoslavia forced the people out of the electronic future and back into the "Dark Ages." Piecing together a makeshift life during the war, the citizens of Sarajevo rediscovered the joy of communal living and the freedom from fax, e-mail, and message couriers. Other essays include testimonies by college students, mothers, educators, and computer scientists. These first-hand accounts will lead you to rethink the technology you are surrounded by every day. I recommend that you give this book a read if you are at all curious about how to unplug from the electronic "revolution."
From the introduction to Minutes of the Lead Pencil Club:"This is, as I said, a practical volume. Our contributors will tell you what's wrong and how to fix it. We suggest that when you destroy our ideas of who we are you cancel our future. Each time you give a machine a job to do you can do yourself, you give away a part of yourself to the machine. That's not practical. If you drive instead of walk, if you use a calculator instead of your mind, you have disabled a portion of yourself. On the other hand, every time you remove a technology from your life, you discover a gift."
Minutes of the Lead Pencil Club offers dissenting views on the growth of the Internet and other means of electronic information distribution. Technophobes and technophiles alike will find much to ponder within these essays. If you would like a more academic take on this subject, I recommend Resisting the Virtual Life: The Culture and Politics of Information, published by City Lights Press.
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Tripod members give this book 3.2 wrenches so far.
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