CONCEPT
The Amish Method
Kelly's name for the Amish community's three-century practice of deliberate technology evaluation — adopting tools only after long periods of community scrutiny for their effect on relationships, autonomy, and faith. The most sophisticated real-world governance framework for technology that Kelly has encountered.
The Amish of Lancaster County and similar communities have been running what Kelly calls "the most sophisticated technology evaluation program in the Western world" since the 18th century. Popular culture portrays the Amish as technology refusers; Kelly's careful observation shows they are technology evaluators. A new tool is provisionally adopted by a willing family; its effects on the family and community are observed for years; only after community-wide deliberation is it formally accepted (with specific permissible conditions), formally rejected, or accepted in modified form. The criterion is not efficiency, not productivity, not even cost. The criterion is: does this strengthen or weaken the relationships, autonomy, and spiritual life the community exists to cultivate.
In The You On AI Field Guide
The misunderstanding of the Amish is instructive. They use electricity (selectively — from off-grid sources rather than the public grid), they use phones (in shared shanties outside the