Regulations and Retreats

I foresee a near future where groups of people do with mental labor what the Amish did with physical labor, which is to say, “Here is where we draw the line. We choose to live on the this side of it.” I’ve been a big fan of the Amish for a couple decades now, mostly as a distant observer, not as someone who actually knows what the hell he’s talking about. What I know of the Amish began in conversation with Kevin Kelly. And more lately through my writing partner Matt Mikalatos. Matt and I were working on an Amish AI TV show for Sony for a few years, and that process taught me a lot. Here’s how Matt puts it, to paraphrase him terribly: “The Amish aren’t against technology. They’re just mindful of how technology impacts the family and community. They don’t have dishwashers because for them washing dishes as a family is time spent together, talking and bonding. They don’t have cars, because they don’t want families to get so far apart in a day that they can’t have dinner together every…