How the Amish adapt technology to their needs

I admire many aspects of the Amish and Mennonite communities (though I would not care to make what I perceive as the sacrifices necessary to follow that lifestyle).

Amish are often portrayed as "Luddites" opposed to all modern technology, which is a gross oversimplification of a variety of ways of coping with the modern world. Many Amish accept technology, but eschew electricity to avoid dependency on the outside community - thus the photo above of a gas-powered ice cutter which cuts ice blocks to be used in non-electric iceboxes.

I found that photo in an excellent essay on this subject at kk.org, including this report a pneumatic-powered Amish machine shop:

The diesel engine burns fuel to drive the compressor that fills the reservoir with pressure. From the tank a series of high-pressure pipes snake off toward every corner of the factory. A hard rubber flexible hose connects each tool to a pipe. The entire shop runs on compressed air. Every piece of machine is running on pneumatic power. Amos even shows me a pneumatic switch, which you can flick like a light switch, to turn on some paint-drying fans. The Amish call this pneumatic system "Amish electricity." At first pneumatics were devised for Amish workshops, but it was seen as so useful that air-power migrated to Amish households. In fact there is an entire cottage industry in retrofitting tools and appliances to Amish electricity.

Other notes from the essay:

Nowadays solar panels are becoming popular among the Amish. With these they can get electricity without being tied to the grid, which was their main worry. Solar is used primarily for utilitarian chores like pumping water, but it will slowly leak into the household...

Artificial insemination, solar power, and the web are technologies that Amish are still debating. They use the web at libraries (using but not owning). From cubicles in public libraries Amish sometimes set up a website for their business. So while Amish websites seem like a joke, there's quite a few of them...

One Amish man told me that the problem with phones, pagers, and PDAs was that "you got messages rather than conversations." That's about as an accurate summation of our times as any...

I visited a shop that built the Amish's famous buggies. From the outside the carts look simple and old fashioned. But inspecting the process in the shop, they are quite high tech and surprisingly complicated rigs. Made of lightweight fiberglass, they are hand cast, and outfitted with stainless steel hardware and cool LED lights...

My impression is that the Amish are living about 50 years behind us. They don't adopt everything new but what new technology they do embrace, they take up about half a century after everyone else does. By that time, the benefits and costs are clear, the technology stable, and it is cheap...

The Amish are steadily adopting technology -- at their pace. They are slow geeks. As one Amish man told Howard Rheingold, "We don't want to stop progress, we just want to slow it down," But their manner of slow adoption is instructive.

• 1) They are selective. They know how to say "no" and are not afraid to refuse new things...
  
• 2) They evaluate new things by experience instead of by theory...
• 3) They have criteria by which to select choices: technologies must enhance family and community...
• 4) The choices are not individual, but communal....

Much more at the link, written by the alpha-geek former editor of Wired.