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What we want is a hunter gatherer lifestyle with space age tools (2022)

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Re: What we want is a hunter gatherer lifestyle with space age tools (2022)

#51

Post by TacticalCoder »

cortesoft wrote: post #14

I always feel so disconnected to my fellow humans when I hear people longing for "simpler times" where they are just out in nature with no technology or modern tools. I would be miserable living simply like that. I don't like spending too much time in nature, I get hot and sweaty and itchy and bothered by bugs. I am always wishing to be building something with electronics, or playing a game, or watching a show or mov…

The amazing thing technology brought me is that I can now have optic fiber in my house in the middle of nowhere. I'm literally typing this while hearing the sound of waves and if I look above my laptop's screen, I see the reflections of the (near full apparently) moon on the sea.

It's a bit of a remote place (closest village is a 10 minutes drive and closest highway is a 45+ minutes drive) so I've got to fix many things around the house myself. My new toy, a 3D printer, is helping me with that: today the wife asked for me to fix the parasol (she wanted to enjoy being outside, without getting sunburned), which I did by 3D printing a few parts. I'm in the middle of nowhere but I'm hardly a luddite.

This afternoon we walked to the beach and my daughter caught two crabs and played with them for half an hour before releasing them: you can have both actual nature and technology: those aren't mutually exclusive.

P.S: my SO needs a lifelong treatment (nothing life-threatening as long as she gets her medication) so the "no tech" / "no modernity" stops right there for me.

Re: What we want is a hunter gatherer lifestyle with space age tools (2022)

#52

Post by rmah »

Animats wrote: post #39

Title is unrelated to content. If you want "a hunter gatherer lifestyle with space age tools" read "Walkaway", by Cory Doctorow. This is the 3D printer fantasy future, where everything can be made easily with small and easily available high-tech equipment. It sort of works in the story. But in reality, 3D printers aren't that good. Somewhere, you need aluminum smelters, steel mills, and copper mines. Those don't scal…

That reminds me of another novel called "The Diamond Age" by Neal Stephenson where everyone has a molecular assembler (i.e. nanotech or 3D printers on steroids) in their home. Putting aside the grey goo gone wild tropes, one thing that I suspect was realistic about the novel was that there were still rich people and poor people. Many people were still very unhappy and dissatisfied. Still the criminals and the corrupt.

You'd think that people would realize by now that material wealth (we've long since surpassed basic needs) does not bring happiness. IMO, past a certain point, happiness is more a function of society, family, status, and perhaps even purpose. Personally, I don't think the top three layers of Maslow's Hierarchy are on top of each other, but an interdependent mix. Even so, material wealth certainly makes life more comfy :-)

Re: What we want is a hunter gatherer lifestyle with space age tools (2022)

#53

Post by TacticalCoder »

nkrisc wrote: post #44
cortesoft wrote: post #14

I always feel so disconnected to my fellow humans when I hear people longing for "simpler times" where they are just out in nature with no technology or modern tools. I would be miserable living simply like that. I don't like spending too much time in nature, I get hot and sweaty and itchy and bothered by bugs. I am always wishing to be building something with electronics, or playing a game, or watching a show or mov…

Have you spent lots of time out in the wilderness before? Those you describe aren’t pleasant, but you learn to accept and deal with. I’m sure the are all kinds of unpleasantness in a “civilized” lifestyle that you no longer even notice because you’re just so used to accommodating them: traffic noise, pollution, artificial light, etc. I once spent a week hiking and camping in a rain forest. The first day I was trying…

> in a “civilized” lifestyle that you no longer even notice because you’re just so used to accommodating them: traffic noise, pollution, artificial light, etc.

But I don't have any of those for there's a whole spectrum between "go one week hiking" and "live in a city".

Re: What we want is a hunter gatherer lifestyle with space age tools (2022)

#54

Post by rmah »

nkrisc wrote: post #50

This makes me think back to Ishmael by Daniel Quinn. Whether or not you agree with all his points I do think he has one very good point that’s worth reflecting on: the way we currently live is not the only way to live. I think another important point to take away from the book is that even if we are not currently on the right path, agriculture and civilization are not inherently exclusive to living in such a way that…

I think that's pretty blatantly obvious there are other ways to live. After all, there are still millions of people surviving on subsistence agriculture in fairly primitive conditions. Still people leading mostly-pastoral lifestyles herding animals. Still millions living in small isolated villages with few modern amenities. Still millions of people living in crowded dirty cities and working in dangerous factories for long hours the way people did in London of the late 1800's. And everything in between. It's funny how so few people voluntarily leave the wealth post-industrial regions to live in any of those, eh?

Re: What we want is a hunter gatherer lifestyle with space age tools (2022)

#55

Post by adrianwaj »

bluebarbet wrote: post #47

The conundrum, as I see it. To master our environment and achieve comfort, we needed the "congealed intellect of our multi billion population". But we also had to trash ecosystems, on which we remain stubbornly dependent (if not for literal survival then certainly for our quality of life). With 8 billion of us, we now have no option but to pool our impacts and live in massive anonymous cities. Even that is damage con…

Population density is the problem/challenge I think more so than absolute population. For cobbled villages, there are farms in Japan that use Yamamoto Transport to move fresh produce across the country overnight, cheaply, and now across Asia overnight too. Can also use it as an inexpensive door-to-door parcel delivery service.

That could also become a robotic service too.

But to really zoom out, as someone else pointed out:

"What would homesteading independence look like in the 21st century in terms of sustainability and so forth?"

I am thinking here about more than just infinite intelligence, but infinite power. Science fact presenting itself as science fiction. And for that you'd need locked-up and hidden technology. Also ways to deal with all the waste and by-products of human evolution. Well said. Supporting the environment that supports us.

So Hub-and-Spoke layouts over Megacities. Providing breathing space for land and people. As much DIY as possible using scalable best-practices with commodity items. Censorship-resistant. Free-flowing funds, energy and information. Protected whistleblowers using a local-first Fediverse that can toggle anonymity on/off. Harnessing waste streams and up-cycling them, and doing the full "Earth shift" while still reaching for the stars!

Re: What we want is a hunter gatherer lifestyle with space age tools (2022)

#56

Post by [deleted] »

nkrisc wrote: post #44
cortesoft wrote: post #14

I always feel so disconnected to my fellow humans when I hear people longing for "simpler times" where they are just out in nature with no technology or modern tools. I would be miserable living simply like that. I don't like spending too much time in nature, I get hot and sweaty and itchy and bothered by bugs. I am always wishing to be building something with electronics, or playing a game, or watching a show or mov…

Have you spent lots of time out in the wilderness before? Those you describe aren’t pleasant, but you learn to accept and deal with. I’m sure the are all kinds of unpleasantness in a “civilized” lifestyle that you no longer even notice because you’re just so used to accommodating them: traffic noise, pollution, artificial light, etc. I once spent a week hiking and camping in a rain forest. The first day I was trying…

[deleted]

Re: What we want is a hunter gatherer lifestyle with space age tools (2022)

#57

Post by t098i3 »

bitwize wrote: post #49
Animats wrote: post #39

Title is unrelated to content. If you want "a hunter gatherer lifestyle with space age tools" read "Walkaway", by Cory Doctorow. This is the 3D printer fantasy future, where everything can be made easily with small and easily available high-tech equipment. It sort of works in the story. But in reality, 3D printers aren't that good. Somewhere, you need aluminum smelters, steel mills, and copper mines. Those don't scal…

I had a friend who believed that large cities should be abolished and society should be made agrarian by law. She believed that that way we would have more free time to pursue our intellectual curiosities, unburdened by our dependence on and duty to urban society. I was like... I'm descended from farm folk. My mom grew up in a farmhouse that had no television and not even indoor plumbing for the first few years of he…

Brett Devereaux's series of articles "Life, Work, Death and the Peasant" is a must read for anyone who benefits from modern technology, IMO: https://acoup.blog/2025/07/11/collections-life-work-death-an...

Pre-industrial life was dominated by labor, struggle and death. There was virtually no social, intellectual or economic mobility. It sucked!

Re: What we want is a hunter gatherer lifestyle with space age tools (2022)

#58

Post by therealpygon »

Animats wrote: post #39

Title is unrelated to content. If you want "a hunter gatherer lifestyle with space age tools" read "Walkaway", by Cory Doctorow. This is the 3D printer fantasy future, where everything can be made easily with small and easily available high-tech equipment. It sort of works in the story. But in reality, 3D printers aren't that good. Somewhere, you need aluminum smelters, steel mills, and copper mines. Those don't scal…

> Somewhere, you need aluminum smelters, steel mills, and copper mines.

Why? We already have plenty of materials that can, are close, or have potential pathways for functional substitutes depending on the application? We are already pretty reliably able to print metal with machines no bigger than a fridge.

What happens when a curable resin or impregnated plastic can sufficiently replace steel/aluminum/copper for functions? Why would a steel foundry be needed for the desktop then? There are more theoretical materials that haven’t been discovered than there are atoms in the universe or something crazy like that, so it isn’t beyond the realm of possibility or even likelihood. Especially if AI helps accelerate that discovery, as it seems to be doing already according to a recent Faraday talk in a Royal Institution video — "How AI is Reinventing the Battery".

It also used to be that you needed a large machine to make a plastic part…now I print some in 20 minutes with something that sits on my desk. If one thing is true, it’s that materials and technology constantly change and (generally) improve.

Re: What we want is a hunter gatherer lifestyle with space age tools (2022)

#59

Post by card_zero »

pbkompasz wrote: post #26
cortesoft wrote: post #14

I always feel so disconnected to my fellow humans when I hear people longing for "simpler times" where they are just out in nature with no technology or modern tools. I would be miserable living simply like that. I don't like spending too much time in nature, I get hot and sweaty and itchy and bothered by bugs. I am always wishing to be building something with electronics, or playing a game, or watching a show or mov…

> Not sure from the page but I rode one coal powered steam train in Poland for “fun” and i wish i never did. It was an open carriage trip in koszalin and the pollution it did was such that coal particles rained on everyone. It was awful and I don’t get the nostalgia of riding such an obsolete vehicle. I was so outraged about it I told my wife the experience was like trying to experience a big pre industrial city with…

From somebody else's post, to be clear. So the point is ... the coal-smoke environments of the industrial revolution, which replaced natural environments, were also awful, being full of grime and cinders instead of sweat and insects. For this reason we progressed even further. You might observe that we're never satisfied, but that doesn't mean that all situations are equivalent and activity is futile.

Re: What we want is a hunter gatherer lifestyle with space age tools (2022)

#60

Post by aaron695 »

Animats wrote: post #39

Title is unrelated to content. If you want "a hunter gatherer lifestyle with space age tools" read "Walkaway", by Cory Doctorow. This is the 3D printer fantasy future, where everything can be made easily with small and easily available high-tech equipment. It sort of works in the story. But in reality, 3D printers aren't that good. Somewhere, you need aluminum smelters, steel mills, and copper mines. Those don't scal…

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