I lived just around the corner when Cyberia, definitely the UK’s and possibly the world’s first ever internet café, opened in 1994. (Naturally, a couple other places have since put in claims they opened first.)
Reading an article today about the founding of Cyberia, I saw this:
And then there was the Amish community in Pennsylvania. Eva had to fly out there to negotiate for the “Cyberia.com” domain name they had bought. “It was a proper barn with horse carts and a wall of modems as they were running a bulletin board and an early ecommerce company. Apparently, there was always one family nominated to be the tech support,” she remembers.
https://www.vice.com/en/article/worlds-first-ever-cyber-cafe-cyberia-london/
I’m skeptical. Amish have a pretty strong aversion to technology. My guess it was Beachy Amish (which is actually Mennonite) or Old Order Mennonite.
And TIL of the Beachy Amish, who absolutely do not go around on horsedrawn surfboards with Annette Funicello.
There are different Amish groups with different tolerances for technology. Some Amish are allowed to use electricity/etc as long as they generate it themselves instead of buying it from a power company for example. They have amish-specific low function computers they use for spreadsheets and the like.
Direct internet access is normally not allowed now, but I could imagine that’s not universal or may not have been banned in the early days. Many modern Amish are allowed to use various work arounds for internet access, like fax services that they can fax a search to, and it will fax back screenshots of web results and websites.
Yeah. Some even go on Holidays to Florida.
I have some very very remote family links to an Amish family. They absolutely use technology but can only do so for work purposes, the computer is highly locked down, in a special room at their work (a carpentry business) and only specific people are allowed to use it. But they have a newsletter and do market their products online and may have a website (But I don’t know the latter for sure).
It was long debated in their community if it was permissible for us to send them E-Mails as that clearly is a personal purpose, but with us being in Europe and Australia it was also considered that the “bond of the family” is important to them. In the end they found a typical “Amish” solution - a very “special one”. We received their monthly newspaper(which is normally printed only,but is electronically produced) and were allowed to send “urgent” messages (e.g. if someone was born,died,etc.) to them(and they were allowed to answer then). But not personal business, that has to go through regular mail. (Funny enough when I was in highschool and asked a few general questions via e-mail for a school presentation that was sooner than mailing back and forth allowed, that brought up another big discussion and they had to decide if answering my questions would already be proselytising or not. (It wasn’t but that took longer than my presentation date…so it didn’t help so much).
We have lost contact sadly during COVID as their children all didn’t come back from Rumspringa(and are seemingly not interested )and the parents have grown old - which is a bit sad considering that this connection was held up for the whole time since the Amish left Europe.
Thanks for sharing this, I find the Amish practices and work arounds for technology really fascinating for some reason. I’d love to tour some of the more technology permissive Amish communities and learn about their rules and restrictions on its use, but unfortunately there’s not any living in my area (not to mention needing to get approval to be shown around).
I lived near Lancaster, where the Amish predominantly live. Can confirm it was more likely to have been as you suggested. Once bought a German Shepherd from some Amish and they had no technology that I could see. Whereas, the Mennonite will drive cars, have phones, etc.
I’m interested to know if this was the case.
Totally secondhand info, but I used to have an ex-Amish friend who told me they often have a small shared outbuilding at the edge of their community that has a phone and a computer with Internet they can use in emergencies. She said some in the community were more liberal about the word ‘emergency’ than others.
(I’m a doofus who literally typed out ‘can any Amish on Lemmy confirm this’ then deleted it, though, so take my words with some salt.)
You can always check out c/amish on Lemmy. They all pitch in with great advice.
You want
!community@instanceand it’ll make an appropriate link.!amish@lemmy.world
Oh shit, who knew the Amish had such a presence here and post so frequently?
Thanks, subscribed.
I should have taken pictures I guess, but I watched an Amish family take their horse and buggy down to the lake. The buggy had a boat trailer attached with an old ski boat (gas motor and all) being pulled. They went out cruising on the lake.
In their homes they can’t have technology but go out back to the massive pole barns where they build gazebos and sheds and you’ll see plenty of electric tools and other tech.
Not sure if that would extend to computer tech, though.
Yeah, I find it hard to believe that they’d be THAT far ahead of the curve. I might believe that they had a computer to promote or sell their business, but to set up their own server? How would they even know?
They’re probably not using it. Instead they’re just cashing in.