Originally Posted by
Herv Peairs
Surely there are a wide variety of reasons to go fully or partially Neaderthal. For me, the most important are the enforced slower pace, the pleasure of working with my hands, and the feeling that my shop is a refuge from less pleasant aspects of modern life.
In the 1980s I read the book Megatrends, by John Naisbitt. The only “trend” that stuck with me was “high tech - high touch”, which (as I remember it) predicts how people will choose to spend their free time based on a human need to balance activities involving new, unsettling, and perhaps dehumanizing technologies with activities that emphasize the natural world, human connection, and tradition. (I am sure I’ve taken liberties with the original.) At the time, I found this idea quite relevant to my life working in the computer industry in a busy urban environment.
In 1999 Naisbitt wrote a second book just on this subject. I found this excerpt relevant:
“When does high tech become low tech, and, more dramatically, when does high tech become high touch? High tech becomes high touch with longevity and cultural familiarity. Today a wooden shuttle loom warped with yarn is high touch. Four thousand years ago in Assyria and Egypt, the loom was the latest advancement in technology. The spear, the wheel, the wedge, the pulley were all once high tech. In the 1920s, a radio encased in plastic Bakelite was considered high tech. Today it is high-touch nostalgia. Eight-track players (a '70s technology) are now collectibles, as are phonographs and the accompanying collection of great 45s, LPs, or cassettes. Older technologies become nostalgic more quickly as new technologies are introduced more rapidly.
“Old-fashioned technologies become reference points for us all. They mark a certain time in our lives, triggering memories. They evoke emotion. High tech has no reference point-yet. High tech holds the hope of an easier life but it does not provoke memory. High-tech consumer goods are only new toys to be explored. They are not yet evocative. The technologies and inventions of the American Industrial Revolution have aged enough now to be considered quaint-no longer obsolete, outdated, old-fashioned, or a symbol of bygone drudgery. Today we romanticize outdated technologies.”
I don’t necessarily advocate reading either book – Megatrends and the snippets I’ve read from the later book are kind of fluffy – but "high tech - high touch" is a valid insight.
Herv