When you see the word computer in the title of this Wendell Berry’s book, you might expect a tech rant or maybe a nostalgic ode to simpler tools. But what you’ll actually find is a deeply thoughtful essay that uses the decision not to buy a computer as a doorway into much bigger conversations about feminism, the human body, technology, work, and the way we live now.

The book opens with Berry’s essay, originally published in The New England Review and Bread Loaf Quarterly and later reprinted in Harper’s. In it, Berry explains why he chooses not to use a computer for writing. His process is simple: he writes with a pencil or pen on paper, and his wife types up his work on a classic Royal typewriter they’ve had since 1956. Not only does she help transcribe his writing, but she also edits, critiques, and improves it. Berry describes their setup as a small literary cottage industry that works well for them and one he sees no reason to change.

But what followed his essay was a flood of letters, two of which harshly criticized the fact that his wife helps him type. Some readers accused Berry of exploiting his wife, suggesting she was subservient or lacking autonomy. In his response, Berry pushes back. He points out that these critics, who proudly call themselves feminists, were quick to reduce his wife to a stereotype based on a single fact, without knowing anything about her as a person.

Berry argues that it’s possible, entirely likely, even, that his wife helps him because she chooses to. That she might enjoy the work. That it could be meaningful to her. And that, above all, only she can speak to her own experience. His critics, in their eagerness to label and judge, missed the most basic principle of feminism: listening to women, not speaking over them.

This book was published in 1987, but it feels even more relevant in today’s fast-paced, hot-take culture. People often rush to defend what they believe is the “right side,” such as feminism, equality, or anti-patriarchy, without pausing to ask whether they’re making assumptions about someone else’s private life. Whenever I see discussions like this, I’m reminded that we, as readers, aren’t in a position to judge the dynamics between Berry and his wife, just as we wouldn’t want others to judge our own relationships. If we truly value feminist ideals, then surely Berry’s wife is the one whose voice matters most here.

When it comes to technology, I get the sense that Berry isn’t rejecting it entirely, but he is extremely cautious, especially when it comes to his own life.

It would be uncharitable and foolish of me to suggest that nothing good will ever be written on a computer. I have only said that a computer cannot help you to write better, and I stand by that. But I do say that in using computers writers are flirting with a radical separation of mind and body, the elimination of the work of the body from the work of the mind.

Wendell Berry, Why I Am Not Going to Buy a Computer

He acknowledges that technology can be useful, but also points out that writing faster doesn’t necessarily mean writing better. And in the age of tools like ChatGPT, Berry’s point does not entirely wrong. We may be producing more but are we thinking more deeply? Are we saying something that truly matters?

The rest of the book explores themes beyond the personal, digging into how technological progress has separated us from the body, from nature, and from the kind of work that once felt like a gift rather than a transaction. Berry’s reflections on feminism, the body, and the machine are some of the most thought-provoking parts of the book, and I’ve included a separate summary of those ideas below.

This is a really short book yet really challenges assumptions, invites reflection, and nudges us to think more carefully about the tools we use and the values we live by.

Summary

How Technology, Modern Work Culture, and the Illusion of Progress Disconnect Us from Ourselves

Wendell Berry delivers a sharp and thoughtful critique of modern assumptions about work, gender roles, marriage, and technological progress. While responding to criticism about his choice not to use a computer as well as his wife’s role in helping him type his manuscripts, Berry opens up a much deeper conversation about how industrial society reshapes human life in troubling ways.

Berry rejects the idea that help within a marriage automatically equals exploitation. He challenges the notion that a person’s value comes only through paid employment, asking why working outside the home under the authority of a corporate boss is considered more “liberating” than contributing freely to one’s household or community. In today’s economy, he observes, both men and women often end up serving systems that demand obedience while stripping away autonomy, dignity, and connection to meaningful work.

What’s especially provocative is Berry’s broader critique of how technological progress, often accepted without question, has reshaped not only our economy but also our relationships and our sense of what it means to be human. He argues that the modern workplace has reduced both men and women to tools in a system that values profit over people. In this view, industrial society has made us more dependent, more alienated, and more detached from the very things that once grounded us: family, community, the body, and the natural world.

Berry warns that we’ve replaced the idea of work as a gift, with love, duty, and mutual care ow with the cold logic of transactional labor. In this system, help is only valued if it comes with a price tag. Relationships become negotiations, and marriage itself is modeled more like divorce, focused on rights, interests, and consumption.

A central theme in Berry’s essay is the disconnection between body and mind brought on by the spread of machines. He believes that the increasing reliance on technology, like computers, encourages a desire to shed the limitations of the body in favor of abstract “efficiency.” But Berry pushes back: even writing, he says, is a physical act, rooted in the rhythms of the body and shaped by the slowness of thought. Faster isn’t always better.

For Berry, resisting the constant pressure to modernize is a form of self-preservation. His vision isn’t about rejecting all progress, but about asking harder questions: What are we giving up in the name of convenience? What kind of life are we building with all this technology? And how can we reclaim a future that doesn’t sacrifice the present?

This isn’t an easy or optimistic vision. Berry acknowledges the difficulty of turning back, or even slowing down, when we’ve already built our lives around the very systems that diminish us. But he insists that if we want a world that’s good and livable for future generations, we need to be willing to question what we think we “need.” And perhaps, in doing so, we’ll rediscover what really matters.

My Favorite Bits

If we are ever again to have a world fit and pleasant for little children, we are surely going to have to draw the line where it is not easily drawn. We are going to have to learn to give up things that we have learned (in only few years, after all) to ‘need.’ I am not an optimist; I am afraid that I won’t live long enough to escape my bondage to the machines.

Wendell Berry, Why I Am Not Going to Buy a Computer

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Author: Wendell Berry
Publication date: 22 February 2018
Number of pages: 48 pages

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