A brief meditation on the role of technology in his own life and how it has changed the landscape of the United States from "America's greatest philosopher on sustainable life and living" ( Chicago Tribune ). "A number of people, by now, have told me that I could greatly improve things by buying a computer. My answer is that I am not going to do it. I have several reasons, and they are good ones." First published in Harper's magazine in the late 1980s, Wendell Berry's "Why I Am Not Going to Buy a Computer" challenges the idea circulating then (and now) that our advanced technological age is a good thing. The volume of reader response to his essay far exceeded any the magazine had seen before. Berry answered his critics with the longer essay "Feminism, the Body, and the Machine," which is also included here in this slim volume.