Look Who's Talking (continued)
 

Calling around cell phone outlets in the Lancaster area, I found a merchant who has been selling cell phones to Plain folk for years. "A great percentage of my customer base is Amish and Mennonite," the merchant told me. "More Amish than Mennonite. We opened our cellular system 12 years ago. Within the first year, I had an Amish customer. He first called from his neighbor's house. He owned a painting business and told me he wasn't allowed to have a cell phone personally, but his bishop said he could buy one for his foreman to use in the company truck. It didn't take too long before I started getting quite a lot of telephone calls from the Amish."

This raised quite a few interesting consumer technology questions. Ordinarily, for example, one needs a credit card (and good credit) to secure a cell phone. "The Amish pay in cash," explained the merchant, who, along with most Amish-friendly shopkeepers, didn't want his name used. "We normally ask for a driver's license for the purpose of identification when we activate cellular service - of course, the Amish don't have driver's licenses. They weren't able to get phones for several months, since we weren't allowed to open accounts without driver's licenses. So we had to make a policy change to accommodate them. We ended up asking for another form of identification. But the Amish don't believe in photography, so we couldn't get a photo ID. Eventually we told them to get Pennsylvania state IDs without photographs.

"I've sold hundreds of cell phones to them, primarily business phones," the merchant continued, adding a few details about how the phones were used. "Some Old Order Amish leave their cell phones in their shanty. Some leave the phone overnight with an English neighbor, who recharges it for them; then the Amish pick up the phone in the morning."
 
 

It's a pretty safe prediction that when the bishops get around to their formal ruling, cell phones will not be deemed appropriate for personal use. In the 1910s, when the telephone was only beginning to change the world at large, the Old Order Amish recognized that the caller at the other end of the line was an interloper, someone who presumed to take precedence over the family's normal, sacred, communications. Keeping the telephone in an unheated shanty in a field, or even an outhouse, was keeping the phone in its proper place.

Though the Amish determination to allow phones at work but ban them at home might seem hard to accept, I appreciate the deliberation put into their decision. In fact, similar reflection might highlight conflicts between our own practices and values. How often do we interrupt a conversation with someone who is physically present in order to answer the telephone? Is the family meal enhanced by a beeper? Who exactly is benefiting from call waiting? Is automated voicemail a dark hint about the way our institutions value human time and life? Can pagers and cell phones that vibrate instead of ring solve the problem? Does the enjoyment of virtual communities by growing numbers of people enhance or erode citizen participation in the civic life of geographic communities?

"What does the Old Order story have to say to members of postmodern society?" asks Diane Zimmerman Umble. "The struggle of Old Order groups to mold technology in the service of community provides a provocative model of resistance for those who have come to recognize that technology brings both benefits and costs.... Their example invites reflection on a modern dilemma: how to balance the rights of the individual with the needs of the community. For them, community comes first."

Indeed, what does one's use of a tool say to other people, particularly loved ones, about where they stand in our priorities? In my own house, we decided to get a rollover to voicemail instead of call waiting - experiences on the receiving end of call waiting convinced us that both parties on the other end of the line get pissed off when you interrupt the conversation. No matter how absorbing the flame war of the moment might be, I make a point of suspending online communication when someone in my presence attempts to talk with me. And I've come to believe that face-to-face conversation should outrank disembodied conversation via cell phone or email.

I never expected the Amish to provide precise philosophical yardsticks that could guide the use of technological power. What drew me in was their long conversation with their tools. We technology-enmeshed "English" don't have much of this sort of discussion. And yet we'll need many such conversations, because a modern heterogeneous society is going to have different values, different trade-offs, and different discourses. It's time we start talking about the most important influence on our lives today.

I came away from my journey with a question to contribute to these conversations: If we decided that community came first, how would we use our tools differently?

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