Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Open Source Low Tech

opensourcelowtech.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 143 posts

Re: Open Source Low Tech

#41

Post by m-i-l »

See also Hugh Piggott's detailed recipe books for building wind turbines, e.g. https://scoraigwind.co.uk/all-of-the-books-by-hugh-how-to-ge... . They were originally printed paper books because they pre-date the internet, and have been popular, e.g. in Scottish island communities, for a long time. I see now they are available as paid eBooks, which seems reasonable to me because the price is very low and a lot of effort has gone into making them, but I wonder if that will be a problem nowadays with people expecting everything on the internet to be free.

Edit: There is also https://pureselfmade.com/ which uses Piggott turbine designs.

Re: Open Source Low Tech

#42

Post by plastic-enjoyer »

That looks rather primitive. I wonder whether the difference between low-tech and high-tech isn’t simply an aesthetic one. If the designs were adapted so that they no longer looked as they’d been designed by an anarcho-primitivist, would we still regard them as low-tech at all?

Re: Open Source Low Tech

#44

Post by Geezus_42 »

bloqs wrote: post #12
nchmy wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I strongly agree that it's incomparably more important to teach a man/village how to fish/build a bike than to give them one. Unfortunately most people who focus on "helping" are grossly incompetent and have largely misaligned incentives (and oversight). As for local innovation, it think it very much depends on where. I've visited and lived in many communities in developing nations in Latin America and there's a dist…

I had never really considered the _competence_ of help before. It makes a huge amount of sense and is a strong argument for intelligent younger folk looking for a meaningful career. Instead of engineering for the pocket lining of your chosen billionaire, why not use those incredible skills to use in frugal or humanitarian engineering

> why not use those incredible skills to use in frugal or humanitarian engineering

Because no one is willing to pay them for it and they have bills to pay.

Re: Open Source Low Tech

#46

Post by utopiah »

utopiah wrote: post #37
Atiscant wrote: post #18

Seems somewhat related to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appropriate_technology

Damn, thank you! I often refers to myself saying "Naive heuristic : avoiding gadgets or services (free or not) that increase inequality by design, through technology or business model or both, would be a good starting point." but I can now point to this!

Neat, found out https://www.appropedia.org this way!

Re: Open Source Low Tech

#48

Post by bregma »

xmprt wrote: post #3

I like the idea behind this. I feel like far too often, the solutions we build for poor communities involve specific materials that can't be manufactured locally, so it just creates more dependence rather than self-sufficiency. It's one thing to build and ship 1000 bicycles to a poor village, but it's another to teach a village how to make bicycles with random spare pipes and materials they can find anywhere. That wa…

You know what they say: ship a village 1000 bicycles and they ride for a day. Teach a village to make bicycles and they ride for the rest of their lives.

The counterargument is, of course, "but what's in it for me?"

Re: Open Source Low Tech

#49

Post by dtj1123 »

xmprt wrote: post #3

I like the idea behind this. I feel like far too often, the solutions we build for poor communities involve specific materials that can't be manufactured locally, so it just creates more dependence rather than self-sufficiency. It's one thing to build and ship 1000 bicycles to a poor village, but it's another to teach a village how to make bicycles with random spare pipes and materials they can find anywhere. That wa…

I think this extends to wealthy communities too. Basically every item in my home more complex than a spoon is beyond my capacity to manufacture or repair. A resource that teaches me how to build useful things without relying on a complex supply chain or prohibitively expensive tools would be pretty darn liberating.

Re: Open Source Low Tech

#50

Post by lukan »

plastic-enjoyer wrote: post #42

That looks rather primitive. I wonder whether the difference between low-tech and high-tech isn’t simply an aesthetic one. If the designs were adapted so that they no longer looked as they’d been designed by an anarcho-primitivist, would we still regard them as low-tech at all?

" I wonder whether the difference between low-tech and high-tech isn’t simply an aesthetic one."

It is not about aesthetics but functionality achieved with cheap avaiable material. That looks seldom beautiful.

Post reply on HN