I’ve built a bike generator (badly), inspired by low-tech magazine. Previously I made my blog solar-powered also inspired by what low-tech magazine built.
I love the site.
Low-tech Magazine underscores the potential of past technologies
21–30 of 81 posts
Re: Low-tech Magazine underscores the potential of past technologies
#22Booting a modern laptop, something I do every day, is the anti-low-tech paradigm. Just my motherboard BIOS is 50348032 bits. And it doesn't provide many options, I think the other way around, it hides many options on purpose. Then there is an i7 processor... a whole beast itself against simplicity. With its Intel Management Engine, it's microcode updates, etc. Secure boot? UEFI? VT extensions? TPM? NFC? graphics init…
The system is the result of the structure and power distribution of the entities that built it. Another compounding factor is that I don't think any of the creators had "simplicity" on the forefront, when building their respective part of the system. So, yes, the end result is not simple.
As for reading the code or anything like that, I don't think I would have managed even a C64, and that's, I think, way simpler than the modern computer you described. So I've been lost for a long time.
Life is just complex.
Re: Low-tech Magazine underscores the potential of past technologies
#23Booting a modern laptop, something I do every day, is the anti-low-tech paradigm. Just my motherboard BIOS is 50348032 bits. And it doesn't provide many options, I think the other way around, it hides many options on purpose. Then there is an i7 processor... a whole beast itself against simplicity. With its Intel Management Engine, it's microcode updates, etc. Secure boot? UEFI? VT extensions? TPM? NFC? graphics init…
> The more it advances, the bigger and out of control it gets. Yet my present computer can do far more than the one I had, say 30 years ago, when things were "simpler".
I keep an old Thinkpad around running Windows XP. Its some 512MHz CPU, so not really that fast. But: It boots faster, the UI feels less sluggish, you can tell apart buttons from inert text, and launching Age of Empires I and restarting my savegame takes like 5 seconds.
I keep this Laptop as living proof that computers did indeed get shittier.
Re: Low-tech Magazine underscores the potential of past technologies
#24Frugality is a quality on which we have collectively given up in the technology field, sadly.
sustainability, degrowth, frugality...these are choices of privilege. you can only call for less when you have more than enough. if you're poor you are already living in degrowth and frugality.
Yes? That's the whole point.
100 years ago it was unthinkable for common people to eat red meat every day, they just couldn't afford it. Today, we are privileged enough that we can afford to do so, but just because we can it doesn't mean we should. It's not good for you.
Same happens in the tech world: we can afford to buy new tech devices to keep up with the bloat that inevitably envelops most things, but should we?
Re: Low-tech Magazine underscores the potential of past technologies
#25Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't own much, but I do gotta pay a mortgage for where I don't keep it.
Sure, I was saying you can live on a third of a paycheck or you can live on 150% of a paycheck. One gives you quite a bit more freedom than the other (numbers arbitrary but you hopefully get the idea)
People say you can live on 1/3 of a paycheck but is that really true? No matter how clever I got with my cuts, I could never trim that much without losing either the payment information or signature line.
Re: Low-tech Magazine underscores the potential of past technologies
#26Frugality is a quality on which we have collectively given up in the technology field, sadly.
sustainability, degrowth, frugality...these are choices of privilege. you can only call for less when you have more than enough. if you're poor you are already living in degrowth and frugality.
Degrowth is an economic doctrine, not a way of life. One part of it is the idea that there is enough wealth to go round, even within planetary resource boundaries, and that distributing it is more important than growing it. It is a very very valid criticism of the current system, but it isn't a critique or a choice of individuals, it is about political economy.
Re: Low-tech Magazine underscores the potential of past technologies
#27Interesting magazine. Not to detract from its content - but are any of those technologies really low tech? Old computers, solar panels, and the various generators all rely on exceptionally advanced science and technology. It would take decades of research to recreate them from scratch. It's more about reusing/repurposing 'old' discarded tech. Or keeping high tech going as people would do in a post apocalyptic society…
The magazine goes in to more than that, solar/old tech stuff is included (I would think) because at this stage, disengaging from tech effectively excludes people from society. So I read it as meaning "within the boundaries of remaining included in society, how low tech can we go?" and the conclusion is seemingly "we can host a high traffic site on a battery powered raspberry pi".
The other stuff in the magazine is very low tech indeed: their articles on hot water bottles, pedal power, very early solar power, and agriculture among others are exceptionally interesting and I'd recommend reading them.
Re: Low-tech Magazine underscores the potential of past technologies
#28Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The more it advances, the bigger and out of control it gets. Yet my present computer can do far more than the one I had, say 30 years ago, when things were "simpler".
I keep an old Thinkpad around running Windows XP. Its some 512MHz CPU, so not really that fast. But: It boots faster, the UI feels less sluggish, you can tell apart buttons from inert text, and launching Age of Empires I and restarting my savegame takes like 5 seconds. I keep this Laptop as living proof that computers did indeed get shittier.
I'm on a thinkpad x230t from over a decade ago, running Linux. It is a bit less vintage than yours, but I can confirm that for the princely sum of £200 on ebay, I can run a window manager and pretty much any software I want.
It replaced a £1500 starbook, which stopped powering on about a month after the warranty expired.
Not quite the same point as you, but I'll agree on something: old hardware that lasts is miraculous.
Re: Low-tech Magazine underscores the potential of past technologies
#29Booting a modern laptop, something I do every day, is the anti-low-tech paradigm. Just my motherboard BIOS is 50348032 bits. And it doesn't provide many options, I think the other way around, it hides many options on purpose. Then there is an i7 processor... a whole beast itself against simplicity. With its Intel Management Engine, it's microcode updates, etc. Secure boot? UEFI? VT extensions? TPM? NFC? graphics init…
> Modern hardware, software and engineering, are a big ball of snow. The more it advances, the bigger and out of control it gets
a sentiment already expressed in 1963! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35851599
Re: Low-tech Magazine underscores the potential of past technologies
#30Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The more it advances, the bigger and out of control it gets. Yet my present computer can do far more than the one I had, say 30 years ago, when things were "simpler".
I keep an old Thinkpad around running Windows XP. Its some 512MHz CPU, so not really that fast. But: It boots faster, the UI feels less sluggish, you can tell apart buttons from inert text, and launching Age of Empires I and restarting my savegame takes like 5 seconds. I keep this Laptop as living proof that computers did indeed get shittier.
I remember when windows xp came out. It felt so slow on my celeron 300 mhz (overclocked though) with a geforce 256, sluggish to a point that I happily switched to gentoo.
Of course your Thinkpad most likely came late in the windows xp lifecycle so it feels snappier but the user experience when windows xp came out was anything but fast.