Comment by whazzmaster | Hacker News Reader

Comment by whazzmaster | Hacker News Reader

Many of my closest friends adhere to the "A2K" philosophy (Amish 2000) where they try not to use any tech released more recently than 2000. They fail as often as they succeed, but social networking is one area that they have largely succeeded in staying away from. In a stunning revelation (and a large dose of sarcasm), they found you do not need Facebook to remain close with your friends.

I left Facebook a year ago because of THEIR haranguing; if my closest friends refuse to use it then my news feed is just filled to the brim with useless noise from high school (non-)friends and distant cousins.

Don't extrapolate anything from this or try it at home; this is what happens when you go to school for computer science and work at a silicon valley tech company yet every single one of your close friends was an english major in college.

I haven't heard the term "A2K" before but it's ingenious. Is there a process for granting exceptions to the timeline restrictions? Even real Amish have exceptions like, "it's okay to use a gas-powered engine to harvest crops as long as it's not providing locomotive force".

I'm fine with no Facebook (glad even), but smartphones are another matter. What's the policy on them?

Most of them grudgingly bought smartphones within the last year and now wouldn't give them up. I yell at them about it but they do fail as often as they succeed. On the other hand, one of them is doing a home birth... so there is that, I guess.

Actually there are some compelling arguments for home birth aided by a midwife. There is a documentary about it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Business_of_Being_Born

I think it's interesting that we've mitigated naturally occurring risks (such as disease) to such an extent that technology itself now poses risks of often similar magnitudes. Take preservatives: on the one hand keeping food fresh prevents various ills, but on the other hand continually ingesting chemical preservatives can cause disease itself such as cancer. The pushback against vaccines is kind of a manifestation of this... or perhaps the perception of risk as I think the science doesn't bear out the fears in this particular case. But in general, the idea that technology is always better seems to be increasingly challenged; often with a legitimate scientific basis.

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