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Open Source Low Tech
111–120 of 143 posts
Re: Open Source Low Tech
#112Earlier quoted context omitted.
the OLPC was the "send them bikes" disguised as the DIY-able system. They designed what they thought would be the best computer for impoverished children when in reality those children had no real use for a computer
I dunno, saying they don't have a use for a computer seems incorrect to me, even in the poorest parts of the world today, a substantial minority have acquired their own computer that's cheap, small, efficient, has a built in long distance radio, can run arbitrary software, doesn't require reliable electricity (I mean cell phones) obviously it's a different technological and economic today compared to 2005, but still,…
Saying they had no use for a computer was a poor choice of words. Rather, OLPC wasn't what those communities needed
Re: Open Source Low Tech
#113Victor Papanek's Design for the Real World [0] is a foundational text in the area of Appropriate Technology (cited here by others).
Essential reading alongside the Illich (also linked by others), Pye's Nature and Art of Workmanship [1], and Winner's "Do Artifacts Have Politics?" [2] for those interested in.... Let's call it an ecology OF technology?
And also the Papanek was probably the book that felt most like a forbidden text in undergraduate architecture school...
[0] https://archive.org/details/designforrealwor0000papa/page/n6...
Re: Open Source Low Tech
#114Earlier quoted context omitted.
What would be different about a bike designed for Africa than one designed for anywhere else? What parts that require specialized tools should be redesigned to use standard tools?
https://www.buffalobicycle.com/storage/documents/Buffalo_com... The buffalo bike is one that was specifically made for developing nations and the project prioritizes local assembly and repair, while the bike is designed to sacrifice weight and aerodynamics, instead offering heavier-duty parts like thicker rims, puncture-proof tires, high-capacity racks, etc. This bike has two chains to reduce the likelihood of a crit…
Buffalo bicycles cost around $150 at least. That's frankly way too expensive to be a good bike for developing countries no matter how well suited it is for rough terrain.
The best bikes I saw were ones that a kid from a family could buy for maybe $20 in local currency and the repairability comes from the cheap cost - if something breaks down, you can find the replacement part from a spare bike that broke down months ago.
Re: Open Source Low Tech
#115I'll share this to all the NGO's ik which can further spread the info, Thanks :)
Re: Open Source Low Tech
#116I 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…
it's very easy to verge into OLPC type thinking with this, you probably should just give them normal bikes instead of trying to come up with some bespoke DIY-able system
> bespoke
I see what you did there
Re: Open Source Low Tech
#117I 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…
Making your own bicycle is a waste of time and energy. If you’re buying in bulk from China, you can get a bike for around a $20 per unit cost. I know that $20 is a lot of money in some parts of the world, but it would make far more sense to organize bulk purchases than to try to start up some kind of ersatz low quality bike industry.
Re: Open Source Low Tech
#118I sure that ai will eat everything
Re: Open Source Low Tech
#119Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Off the top of my head. Steel frame, can be repaired / modified with any old welder. Designed so it can be taken apart with the minimum of generic tools. Standard bearings, brake blocks etc (probably brake blocks that you can shove some piece of old tyre in). So basically just your average cheap crappy Halfords Bike-Shaped Object type "bike"?
No. I politely covered BSOs "very cheap bikes that aren't really designed for long term use" You want cheap and reliable, not cheap with a load of doodads to make it seem expensive.
Well you strip all the crap off, don't you? Just run the barest frame possible.
You still have the problem that the bits that you cannot just knock up out of old Morris Minor steering columns or AK47 barrels are the bits that break.
I know one person who has legitimately worn out a bike frame, in 40-something years of cycling, and it wasn't me. It was a guy who rode his bike about 50 miles *every single day* and rode from Edinburgh to Glasgow and back a couple of times a week. Eventually it started cracking around the welds.
Re: Open Source Low Tech
#120Earlier quoted context omitted.
The trouble with your premise is that it doesn't just apply to local people, it applies to people in general. Incompetence is all around us. Notice that everyone is a local in the place where they live. But local people at least have the benefit of knowing their own situations, which puts them ahead of some other rando who doesn't even have that and presumes to know better.
And hence, AS I SAID, people should collaboratively work together. There's no presumption - despite you recognizing that incompetence is all around us, you'd be amazed at how many completely obvious things are not done, and other things done very poorly
Which is a misunderstanding of the premise that locals know best.
No one thinks that going to someone and offering them ideas is bad. The thing people actually object to is imperialism, and they object to it because it's common. All over the place you see not just governments making rules from an ivory tower, but even well-meaning non-profits providing grants or resources with the requirement that things be done in a particular way with no regard for local conditions.
If you're trying to help someone then you shouldn't need to coerce them. Nobody was ever objecting to the cases where you don't.