Happy Birthday, Walden

ByMike Moffit

Walden was published 152 years ago today, on August 9, 1854. Walden is one of my favorite books. I’ve read it a few times, and skimmed through it many more. I always discover some new idea, historic curiosity, subtle witticism, or brilliant turn of phrase in Walden. I love how Henry Thoreau writes; he is one of the great American writers, and Walden is one of the great American books. Walden is appreciated around the world, and has been translated into dozens of languages. Walden had a powerful influence on Gandhi; he famously read it while imprisoned for protesting the treatment of Indians in South Africa.

Computers (even Apple computers) and the ideas in Walden would seem to be opposed. However, Thoreau’s ideas of self-reliance, freedom of expression, independence, and appreciation for Nature powerfully inspired the inventors of the personal computer.

Many of those innovators were radicals who, like Thoreau, were extremely intelligent and yet did not quite fit into mainstream American society. From MIT to Stanford, to the Amateur Computer Society and Homebrew Computer Club, Thoreau was a personal hero of the inventors of the digitally interconnected world we occupy today. And while Thoreau might not appreciate Myspace, spam, the Drudgereport, and the billions of pages of online porn, he would probably approve of the research options, freedom of expression, and platform for speech offered by the internet.

The ideas of Walden are more relevant than ever. You can read Walden free online at Project Gutenberg by clicking here.

Also check out the Thoreau blog; it’s as if Thoreau kept a blog. It’s one of my favorite sites; click here to read it.

Similar Posts

  • Apple OS X 10.1

    With OS X 10.5 upon us, I thought it would be a bit funny and interesting to see what OS X 10.1 looked…

  • Hapy's Shoes: Nike –

    Well, when Hapy heard I ordered a pair of Nike + sneakers, he had to rush out and get some for himself. Problem…

  • AppleCare…To the Rescue

    While Apple’s products have significantly lower rates of failure than a lot of their competition, things do go wrong from time to time. When I got my iPhone 4S at launch, it would occasionally restart itself. At first, I thought nothing of it, considering I was coming from an Android device that rebooted itself so often that it might as well have been saying, “Hey, just in case you forgot you customized your splash screen, here it is again!”

    A couple of weeks ago, my phone didn’t just restart itself, but became a useless brick until I gave it a hard reset while plugged in. A quick Google search revealed this issue to be a symptom of hardware failure known in the diagnosis log as “panic.plist.” I checked my diagnosis log and there it was, three “panic.plist” occurrences in the past week. After a brief phone call with AppleCare, I was given the choice of sending the phone back to them and waiting close to a week for a replacement or to have a $730 hold placed on my credit card while they sent me a new phone overnight. As I didn’t have another phone to use, I opted for the latter.

    Normally, to have a phone sent overnight would cost $30 but because I had AppleCare, the fee was waived. Cut to today; the hold has been lifted and I have a shiny new iPhone that has yet to give me an issue. Granted, I was within the original one year warranty, but had this happened after that first year, I would be scavenging Craigslist for a cheap replacement. Thanks, AppleCare–I owe you one.

  • Jim & Jaime's New Rides

    Here’s some nifty pictures of Jim’s new scooter. It’s so cool, I was actually thinking about getting one of these myself instead of…

  • Why Macs Justify Their Price.

    Here are my personal top five reasons why Macs justify their price: 1. Quality. Apple desktop and laptop computers are rated #1 by…

  • Apple Game Demos

    More recently I’ve been getting back into playing video games. While I do buy most of my games, I usually like to try…