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Modern Tech inside an Amish Horse-Drawn Buggy

blog.caranddriver.com

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Re: Modern Tech inside an Amish Horse-Drawn Buggy

#41

Post by larsiusprime »

altendo wrote: post #3

>Despite what you may have heard, the Amish aren’t against technology. Communities adopt new gadgets such as fax machines and business-use cellphones all the time—as long as the local church approves each one ahead of time, determining that it won’t drastically change their way of life. This alone is the most interesting point of the article. People not belonging to the community, like myself, have a fixed preconceiv…

I don't have the citation handy, but one fun fact is that this has basically shaken out by "natural selection" if you will - there used to be Amish communities that were fine with modern travel and personal ownership of cars... but all such Amish communities basically disintegrated into the larger culture. The ones that are left are the ones that picked technology policies that allowed them to absorb benefits from modern technology without fundamentally disrupting their culture.

Re: Modern Tech inside an Amish Horse-Drawn Buggy

#42

Post by maxerickson »

sbierwagen wrote: post #29
dripton wrote: post #8

>There was actually an alternator system attempted in the last five years,” he says. “It worked about 60 percent, but it never took off. Generator hubs for bicycles are mature technology at this point. Including capacitors in the taillights so they stay on when the bike is stopped. Buggies could easily adopt them, but I guess it's not worth the bother if batteries mostly work.

I've got a dual dynamo/drum-brake hub, the Sturmey Archer X-FDD. It works quite well-- but only at normal biking speeds. Below 10mph it's flickery and annoying. If a horse isn't in a hurry, it usually travels at a walk, which is something like 5mph. So bicycle dynamos won't work well for a buggy.

It could be mounted with a belt (at a reduction). The horse probably won't be as bothered by the increased load as a human.

Re: Modern Tech inside an Amish Horse-Drawn Buggy

#43

Post by chiaro »

redsummer wrote: post #33
chiaro wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cars give freedom to those who don't have it. It's easy to have a rosy pastoral view of the Amish, but the reality is grim for many young women subjugated to that culture. The ability for such people to see that the outside world can be far less harsh than the one they are used to will necessarily (and in my opinion should ) lead to the collapse of those communities.

The Amish are happier than almost all Americans: http://scienceblogs.com/cortex/2007/03/16/happiness-wealth-a... You want those communities to collapse, because you see no other solutions except more tech, more greed, more 'progress'. That's the hamster wheel you've been given. What other life could there be?

I knew briefly a woman who had ran away from everything she knew at 17, to avoid a marriage. The stories of what counted as "normal" was horrific, especially with regards to daughters. Between the corporal punishment, starvation-as-punishment and strict-to-consequence-of-abandonment gender roles, it mapped closely to the popular conception of young women's lives in radical Islam. They also have a greater prevalence of genetic diseases due to inbreeding.

The study linked in that blog post makes no reference to the Amish, whose happiness is entirely conjecture from the blogger.

Re: Modern Tech inside an Amish Horse-Drawn Buggy

#44

Post by erik »

khuey wrote: post #38
dreamcompiler wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no wood on Mars. A great deal of our infrastructure (not just Amish infrastructure) is wood-based, and the first Martians will have to find a substitute for it. The typical substitute for wood is plastic, but that comes from petroleum, and there's none of that on Mars either. I suppose one of the first things we'll have to build on Mars is greenhouses -- not just for food, but for plant-based plastic to build…

Or we'll just make a lot more things out of metal.

I wonder how useful martian soil is for making glass or ceramics.

Re: Modern Tech inside an Amish Horse-Drawn Buggy

#45

Post by jfoutz »

avar wrote: post #9
Terribledactyl wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it's also easy to fall into the trap of attributing more cohesion than there is and simplifying all of the groups into some sort of average. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amish#Use_of_technology_by_dif...

There's some really interesting inconsistencies in that table. E.g. some think tractors for fieldwork aren't OK but lawnmowers are, for others somehow chainsaws are bad but washing machines are fine etc. Looking these over there doesn't seem to be any clear pattern to me. The grandparent mentioned them not wanting things that will "drastically change their way of life", surely having a washing machine is a bigger cha…

a washing machine, with little parts that can be replaced with wood or metal, seems like the kind of thing that can be kept in good working order for a long time.

I'd be leery of a chainsaw with handmade parts.

I also kind of wonder about lubricants and fuel in a chainsaw, how hard is it to safely duplicate those oils?

Re: Modern Tech inside an Amish Horse-Drawn Buggy

#46

Post by beambot »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #39
dzdt wrote: post #27

The Amish attitude towards technology is a pretty good model of what an eventual Mars colony will need. When (or if) people finally travel to Mars to stay, the biggest risk to the colony will be being dependent on imports from Earth. It will always be expensive to send ships from Earth to Mars, so it is folly to assume that resupply missions will continue indefinitely. So a colony which hopes to be viable must be vig…

This suggests that if you want to create a company that is acquired by Elon Musk you probably want to design/patent systems and methodologies for building things on Mars :-)

You're making the assumption that IP (designs & patents) will be enforceable on Mars. That sounds risky. You can't even get those guarantees on earth among nation states.

Re: Modern Tech inside an Amish Horse-Drawn Buggy

#47

Post by redsummer »

Clubber wrote: post #31
redsummer wrote: post #28

A lot of people think the Amish are against technology. In fact, they carefully consider the technology's effect on themselves and their community. Will it really help, or is it just a new thing which will cause unintended consequences? For instance, some Amish groups accepted cars, and their community disappeared - when anyone can drive anywhere the community collapsed. Now there are no Amish who allow cars. The sam…

>In fact, technology does not improve the human condition in most cases. It erodes it. I agree with what you said but think this is a little strong of a statement. I guess it depends on what you mean by technology. I'd rather live today than in the 1900s because of medical technology alone. It's like anything. Technology just is. It's what people with free will do with it that can be harmful or helpful. With that sai…

You might think you would prefer to live now rather than 1900, but I would suspect that the word "live" had greater meaning then.

Here is Ben Franklin on the appeal of the traditional Native American life: "When an Indian Child has been brought up among us, taught our language and habituated to our Customs, yet if he goes to see his relations and make one Indian Ramble with them, there is no perswading him ever to return, and that this is not natural [to them] merely as Indians, but as men, is plain from this, that when white persons of either sex have been taken prisoners young by the Indians, and lived a while among them, tho' ransomed by their Friends, and treated with all imaginable tenderness to prevail with them to stay among the English, yet in a Short time they become disgusted with our manner of life, and the care and pains that are necessary to support it, and take the first good Opportunity of escaping again into the Woods, from whence there is no reclaiming them"

Re: Modern Tech inside an Amish Horse-Drawn Buggy

#48

Post by elastic_church »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #39
dzdt wrote: post #27

The Amish attitude towards technology is a pretty good model of what an eventual Mars colony will need. When (or if) people finally travel to Mars to stay, the biggest risk to the colony will be being dependent on imports from Earth. It will always be expensive to send ships from Earth to Mars, so it is folly to assume that resupply missions will continue indefinitely. So a colony which hopes to be viable must be vig…

This suggests that if you want to create a company that is acquired by Elon Musk you probably want to design/patent systems and methodologies for building things on Mars :-)

Patents are only enforceable for 19 years, so the cost is too high for the speed at which mars development will take place this century.

Re: Modern Tech inside an Amish Horse-Drawn Buggy

#49

Post by jacobheric »

fuhrysteve wrote: post #18
altendo wrote: post #3

>Despite what you may have heard, the Amish aren’t against technology. Communities adopt new gadgets such as fax machines and business-use cellphones all the time—as long as the local church approves each one ahead of time, determining that it won’t drastically change their way of life. This alone is the most interesting point of the article. People not belonging to the community, like myself, have a fixed preconceiv…

In the area I grew up, inflated rubber tires and bicycles were not allowed, but wooden tires on scooters were fine. Reason being, inflated tires made it too easy to travel far from home, which was generally discouraged. So many people I grew up with seemed to think that Amish were being hypocritical by paying for taxi drivers to drive them around. That's an over-simplistic view. To an Amish community, taxi fees are a…

Thanks for the link. Great documentary. I just watched that with my kids. We were absolutely mesmerized by the earnestness and openness of the family profiled.

Re: Modern Tech inside an Amish Horse-Drawn Buggy

#50

Post by moron4hire »

stcredzero wrote: post #40
dreamcompiler wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no wood on Mars. A great deal of our infrastructure (not just Amish infrastructure) is wood-based, and the first Martians will have to find a substitute for it. The typical substitute for wood is plastic, but that comes from petroleum, and there's none of that on Mars either. I suppose one of the first things we'll have to build on Mars is greenhouses -- not just for food, but for plant-based plastic to build…

The typical substitute for wood is plastic, but that comes from petroleum, and there's none of that on Mars either. This was covered in Zubrin's The Case for Mars. With the input of some hydrogen and some energy, you can source feedstock for plastics from Mars' atmosphere. For example, ethylene: http://pioneerastro.com/Team/RZubrin/Mars_In-Situ_Resource_U...

Except Mars' atmosphere is more akin to a vacuum than most industrial vacuum processes.
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