“Gravel roads don’t mean the end of transportation. We’ll just have to slow down considerably, and that may not be a bad thing.”
Read: The return of gravel roads.
Picture: a strip road.
Has There Been Progress Since 1250?
April 4, 2010 by Filed Under: Jacques Ellul, Quotes, Random, Work
“Fourastié [A French economist] is right in putting the case numerically to dramatize the shortening of the work week and the enormous transformation in living standards and in the qualitative nature of life. The case is indeed simple if 1950 is compared with 1815. But it is no longer quite so simple if 1950 is compared with 1250. It is important to consider, for labor, not only time but intensity.”
“It is possible to make a meaningful comparison between the fifteen-hour workday of a miner in 1830 and the seven-hour workday of 1950. But there is no common denominator between the seven-hour day of 1950 and the fifteen-hour day of the medieval artisan. We know that the peasant interrupts his workday with innumerable pauses. He chooses his own tempo and rhythm. He converses and cracks jokes with every passer-by.”
“We cannot say with assurance that there has been progress from 1250 to 1950. In so doing, we would be comparing things which are not comparable. Therefore, it is advisable to limit ourselves to saying that there has been progress since the beginning of the industrial era, which was founded on the breakup and destruction of the non-comparable and vanished old order.”
Quoted from “The Technological Society
High-tech Bike or Low-tech Car? The Sinner Mango Sport
The Mango Sport is a new recumbent tricycle by Dutch manufacturer Sinner. The emphasis is on light weight (27.5 kg) and high performance. As is the case with other velomobiles sold by Sinner, the 20 gear drive-chain remains entirely enclosed for low maintenance, all three wheels have suspension, and the luggage capacity is generous (70 litres). It has built in front and rear lights. A weather-proof top is available. All this comes with a price tag of 5,950 euros, including sales tax.
Detailed specifications / More pictures / More Sinner bikes.
No Tech Day
March 27, 2010 by Filed Under: Events
Practical Action, a charity that uses simple and innovative technologies to tackle poverty in the developing world (previously), challenges gadget addicts to give up their favourite tech toys on No Tech Day, Saturday, March 27.
That’s today. Due to technical problems, I could not publish this earlier. Which means I was actually not allowed to publish this. And you should not be reading this. But you did not know.
Grinding the Wind: the Treadwheel Fan
March 25, 2010 by Filed Under: History, Human power, Jailhouse technology, Random, Treadwheels & treadmills
I wrote about prison treadmills before. They were invented in England in 1817 by Sir William Cubit, who observed prisoners lying around in idleness and put himself to the task of “reforming offenders by teaching them habits of industry”.
Forty-four prisons in England adopted it as a form of hard labour that could also grind grain or pump water.
However, as it turns out, in at least one jail prisoners were only “grinding the wind”: they were walking a treadwheel that was connected to a giant fan built on the courtyard. By this apparatus the resistance necessary for rendering the tread-wheel hard labour was obtained.
The system is explained in “The criminal prisons of London and scenes of Prison Life” (1862), written by Henry Mayhew & John Binny. Starting on page 299, they describe the method of “hard labour”, and the technologies used for it: the treadwheel, crank labour & the shot drill. Great reading.
Mad Max Wars
March 23, 2010 by Filed Under: Military technology, War technology, Warfare, Weapons
The embrace of a low-tech approach by Taliban-trained bombmakers – they are building improvised explosive devices out of fertilizer and diesel fuel – has stymied a $17 billion U.S. counteroffensive against the devices in Iraq and Afghanistan, military officials say. Electronic scanners or jammers, which were commonly deployed in Iraq, can detect only bombs with metal parts or circuitry. Read.
