Minutes of the Lead Pencil Club: Second Thoughts on the Electronic Revolution

By Bill Henderson

Book Overview

Have you just junked your most recent, instantly obsolete, computer? Are you thinking of buying your first computer? Do you find that your business and personal life have been invaded by a bewildering array of electronics--from voice and E-mail to faxes and televisions with hundreds of channels to the wildly hyped Internet and World Wide Web? Do you suffer from info-overload? Do you sometimes think we have lost our souls in a constant quest for speed, entertainment, and convenience? The Minutes of the Lead Pencil Club is a dynamic record of an ongoing meeting of minds from as far away as Tasmania, India, and Austria and as close to home as California and New York. Contributors include Russell Baker, Neil Postman, David Gelernter, Wendell Berry, Sven Birkerts, Mark Slouka, Clifford Stoll, Doris Grumbach, Andre Codrescu, and others, with comments by John Updike, Robert Hughes, Henry David Thoreau, E. Annie Proulx, Alvin Toffler, Dave Barry, Edmund Morris, Farley Mowat, Ted Koppel, Nicholson Baker, Paul Goodman, Gary Snyder, Kirkpatrick Sale, and Lawrence Ferlinghetti, plus letters and news items from around the world.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0916366847
• ISBN13: 9780916366841
• Release Date: April 1996
• Publisher: Pushcart Press
• Length: 235 Pages
• Weight: 0.97 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 7.3" x 7.3"

Customer Reviews

Its critique has come true

The essays here sound a warning: technology has become our god. Granted, many technologies such as the telephone, water purification plants, airplanes, are given a pass. The main culprit is the computer (and related technologies), which have taken over our consciousness -- lives plugged into the electronic web of Internet, email, "virtual sex", video games, cell phones (and now Twitter, Broadband, Facebook, etc.) We have created a culture that cannot do anything without a computer.

Its critique has come true

The essays here sound a warning: technology has become our god. Granted, many technologies such as the telephone, water purification plants, airplanes, are given a pass. The main culprit is the computer (and related technologies), which have taken over our consciousness -- lives plugged into the electronic web of Internet, email, "virtual sex", video games, cell phones (and now Twitter, Broadband, Facebook, etc.) We have created a culture that cannot do anything without a computer. Also of grave concern: Databases make privacy nearly impossible.

Great Read

Yahoo!! At last someone has given credit where credit is due. What a voice in the wilderness. The essays are very good and thought provoking.

Walden Pond Revisited

I had never known such a book exists until I stumbled upon it at my local bookstore. What surprised me even more was that there is a place for such a club in this world of 1,000 mhz computers and super pocket pcs.It seems ironic that you are actually reading this review on a computer and even more so that this review was written on a pc at my work place. But isn't this book targetted more on computer users than those who never touch a computer?Read the Lead Pencil Club manifesto, it will help you get your life back before it's all too late.Long live the Leadites!

Voices in the wilderness

Minutes of the Lead Pencil Club is an interesting collection of bits and pieces related to the shunning of technology or the minimal use of technology. Electronic gadgets, including computers like the one on which you read this review, are complained about, fretted over, and lampooned. Some of the contributors are techies who have realized the limitations or deficiencies of modern technology over previous methods. Some contributors take after Luddites, wishing to live a simple life. This is a book that may be taken lightly or seriously. This reader found it to be a welcome voice in the wilderness of tech-dom. Using a pencil once in a while won't hurt anyone.