This section of the book covers my personal technology use and it's comprehensive, ranging from how I read the news, to how I water the garden and interact with the world of social media.

I trained as an engineer and worked in the IT industry for nearly thirty years and I saw a lot of the downsides of technology use as it evolved. As a result my personal technology use takes quite a lot of inspiration from the Amish. The Amish take two key approaches to technology adoption: they experiment with it, to ensure they understand how it will affect their lives and they only adopt technologies that contribute positively to their values.

In this chapter I describe my personal technology use. What's worked and what hasn't. Since gardening is a big part of my life, most of this chapter has some relevance to gardening, but its applicability is much broader than that.

Quite a few of the products that I use have been gifted to me and I make that clear. I normally won't recommend anything that I wouldn't buy myself though, if I do I will explain why.

<aside> 💡 I think the Amish approach to tech is inspired. Kevin Kelly (a very interesting person) wrote a book, in 2010, "what technology wants" which covers a lot of ground, but for me its key insight is that technology is almost like a living organism, it's evolving in its own way, in accordance with its own needs and those needs often don't align with ours. To have a healthy relationship with technology, we need to be thoughtful and discriminating in what we adopt and how we use it.

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  1. Guiding principles for technology adoption and use (virtuous and vicious cycles)
  2. Strategy and planning
  3. Learning about the world
  4. Health
  5. Personal productivity
  6. Entertainment
  7. Content creation and sharing
  8. Keeping a diary and reliving memories
  9. Controlling my environment
  10. Household lighting and comfort
  11. Personal transport
  12. Growing healthy seedlings
  13. Growing healthy plants
  14. Watering
  15. Harvesting ingredients and meal preparation
  16. Storing produce

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