alt Hacker NewsWhy would I care about some anti-tech person? As someone who grew up in a rural area, with family that ran a hobby farm, descended from sharecroppers, there's nothing to romanticize.
Edit: but really, I can't see any possible reason to read this person's writing over, say, something about Norman Borlaug. Never heard of this person before now, HN never contextualizes obits, didn't come here just to fight.
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I'm actually with you. Having read some of Wendell Berry's work, he comes across to me as an impractical dreamer. Not only do his ideals not scale to support humanity, but he refuses to acknowledge the external impact of his decisions.
Henry David Thoreau's writings about self-reliance are harder to tolerate once you learn that he was supported by family. Yes he lived in the woods, but his mother literally brought him food. In the same vein, Wendell Berry's writings about technology are harder to tolerate once you learn that he made his wife type up his manuscripts for him to be sent on to publishers.
It's worth having deep conversations about the impact and value of technology in modern society. It's also hard to take a sermon seriously when it's being preached by a hypocritical curmudgeon.
Yes, like every homesteader, Berry is a bit of a LARPer. Even his sparse lifestyle relies on a lot of products and services developed in technological society. He's still a good read though.