From there I could research and write. Because of advances in communication technology, I could maintain contact with my office by phone, fax, and e-mail. While there are drawbacks with increased technology, the benefits far outweigh them. Increased wealth and advances in technology enable people to choose a simpler lifestyle. This is quite different from modern-day Luddites who want to impose a simpler lifestyle on all of us through regulation and legislation.
Most cultures have no such choice.
Their lack of capital traps them in the mundane world of working just for necessities. If today's simpler-lifers had their way, we would all be consigned to a life of drugery and hopelessness. Consider what life would be like in the new millennium if we turned back the clock just 100 years. Here's just one disgusting example. Great pains are being taken to rid our air of exhaust pollutants.