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Low-tech Magazine underscores the potential of past technologies

solar.lowtechmagazine.com

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Re: Low-tech Magazine underscores the potential of past technologies

#4

Post by aaron695 »

> Low-tech Magazine underscores the potential of past technologies

No, it's a romantic view of the past that ignores all the short comings.

Of course past tech, or more accurately past ideas, combined with todays technology can come back and be popular.

Using high tech computers for material design, an internet system joining 8 billion people (3 billion by one degree), and a higher regard for life[1] we have managed to get 100 year old tech, solar panels and batteries working for remote water pumping for instance. (Not a great example since windmills are older)

Real Low-tech is harder but fun. Why kick a ball around a field, that's stupid, but it's fun. Fruit walls are stupid, but fun and look cool, why be ultra rich if you can't build a few fruit walls and kick a ball around.

Just don't confuse eating cake for what the real poor should be doing.

[1] Windmill maintenance is too expensive because of OH&S

Re: Low-tech Magazine underscores the potential of past technologies

#6

Post by pjerem »

tivert wrote: post #5

The dithered images make me feel like I'm reading something from 1994, which is not a bad thing.

What’s cool is that they dithered the images to voluntarily to make them as small (in bytes) as possible.

So it’s visual nice but it also is coherent with their editorial and with the choice to host on a solar powered server.

Everything is explained here :

https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/about/the-solar-website/#h...

I think that just this set of choices transforms this somehow classic blog into something special. Maybe some sort of technical art. Somehow it’s the living proof that in a low-tech world, we don’t have to ditch the internet, just transform it.

Re: Low-tech Magazine underscores the potential of past technologies

#9

Post by atoav »

aaron695 wrote: post #4

> Low-tech Magazine underscores the potential of past technologies No, it's a romantic view of the past that ignores all the short comings. Of course past tech, or more accurately past ideas, combined with todays technology can come back and be popular. Using high tech computers for material design, an internet system joining 8 billion people (3 billion by one degree), and a higher regard for life[1] we have managed…

> No, it's a romantic view of the past that ignores all the short comings.

Doing/having/using less isn't automatically attractive. If we want people to embrace a more sustainable lifestyle a certain healthy amount of nostalgia and romanticism can help selling it.

These (mental) images are not without power and reason — we live in a consumer society where everybody is bombarded with images of desire, images that are usually about buying and owning things or traveling somewhere. I don't think you can win against that kind of indoctrination by not using images at all.

And not all of the lowtech stuff there is just flashy romanticism. E.g. the article about balcony solar without battery makes sense. Now what is low tech will always be graded on a curve. Compared to no electronics that is pretty high tech. Your ball is pretty high tech compared to just playing with conifer cones.

As a kid that grew up in the alps we usually played with what was availabe wherever we went and that was a lot of fun. But how do you make that attractive to people who grew up in places where they wouldn't even let you walk home alone after school and put a tablet in your paws as soon as you opened your mouth? The answer is romanticisim.

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