I bought a book the other day from a local old-school bookshop that specializes in used books and does not have a website or computerized inventory system. The book in question is aptly titled Minutes of the Lead Pencil Club: Pulling the Plug on the Electronic Revolution and is edited by Bill Henderson, founder of Pushcart Press.

Published in 1996 at the dawn of the internet age, it is a collection of letters, essays, cartoons, and commentary on how and why to live contraption-free in a computer-crazed world. The Lead Pencil Club was founded in 1993 by Henderson and author Doris Grumbach and its “director emeritus” is Henry David Thoreau.

One of the book’s contributors is renowned activist Wendell Berry, who states, “I am moreover a Luddite, in what I take to be the true and appropriate sense. I am not ‘against technology’ so much as I am for community. When the choice is between the health of a community and technological innovation, I choose the health of the community.”

In his essay titled “Why I Am Not Going to Buy a Computer,” Berry shares how he writes all of his dozens of books using good old-fashioned pencil or pen and paper before his wife types them on a 1956 Royal manual typewriter. As Berry outlines, “To make myself as plain as I can, I should give my standards for technological innovation in my own work. They are as follows:

1. The new tool should be cheaper than the one it replaces.

2. It should be at least as small in scale as the one it replaces.

3. It should do work that is clearly and demonstrably better than the one it replaces.

4. It should use less energy than the one it replaces.

5. If possible, it should use some form of solar energy, such as that of the body.

6. It should be repairable by a person of ordinary intelligence with the necessary tools.

7. It should be purchasable and repairable as near to home as possible.

8. It should come from a privately-owned shop or store for maintenance and repair.

9. It should not replace or disrupt anything good that already exists.”

According to the Manifesto of the Lead Pencil Club: “Like Henry David Thoreau, our club is cranky. We honor provocation. We want to start an argument in the broad flapping American ear…Of course, in all our correspondence, we will favor the lead pencil—simple, erasable, light, portable, and responding immediately to the mind…Leadites Unite!”