No Tech Reader #35

January 5, 2023 by kris de decker Filed Under: Archery, Bicycles, Bikes, Books & Reference, Communication, Cooking stoves, Economy, Energy efficiency, Energy efficiency paradox, Fire, Gadgets, Health, No Tech Readers, Phones, Technology, Warfare

No Tech Reader #34

October 13, 2022 by kris de decker Filed Under: Consumption, Craftsmanship, DIY, Economy, Education, Farming, Health, Luddites, No Tech Readers, Politics, Social media, Technology, Travel, Unabomber
  • Low-tech at the University. [Kairos] The challenge of low-tech is not to juxtapose harmless « soft » alternatives to industrial technologies, as this would only create a new niche market for « responsible consumers ». It is a question of replacing, as much as possible, the industrial productions by artisanal productions, adapted to the direct environment of their user, selected, understandable, repairable, adaptable and durable.
  • Why the past 10 years of American life have been uniquely stupid. [The Atlantic] “The main problem with social media is not that some people post fake or toxic stuff; it’s that fake and outrage-inducing content can now attain a level of reach and influence that was not possible before 2009.”
  • Stuck Between Climate Doom and Denial. [The New Atlantis] The incredibly fascinating, important, and nuanced issue of climate change has become an online team sport between the good guys (your side) and the bad guys (the other side).
  • The Unabomber and the origins of anti-tech radicalism. [Journal of Political Ideologies]. “As today’s most infamous anti-tech radical, and as the one with the most detailed blueprint for a revolution, Kaczynski may well become the ‘Marx’ of anti-tech.”
  • The Degrowth conundrum. [Resilience] “Only when the right ideas and values become predominant can structural change towards simpler lifestyles and systems take place. These conditions show the fundamental mistake built into the standard socialist assumption that the good society must have highly centralised state control. And it shows that the standard socialist strategy of taking control of the state is also fundamentally mistaken.”
  • Ecological Civilisation: Beyond Consumerism and the Growth Economy – Free Course. “This video series will be grappling with the problems of consumerism and the growth economy; envisioning alternative, post-carbon ways of life; and considering what action can be taken, both personally and politically, to help build an ecological civilisation.”
  • Why we need the apocalypse. [Unherd] In modern terms, “apocalypse” has come to mean “the cataclysmic end of everything”. But this is a long way from the ancient Greek understanding: to uncover, to disclose or lay bare. From this perspective, apocalypse isn’t the end of the world. Or at least, not just the end of the world. Rather, it’s the end of a worldview: discoveries that mean a previous way of looking at things is no longer tenable.
  • Monbiotic Man. [The Land] “Simon Fairlie assesses the farm-free future for humanity spelled out in George Monbiot’s latest book ‘Regenesis’.”
  • Beyond rescue ecomodernism: the case for agrarian localism restated. [Small farm future] “Given the present world historical moment of profound crisis that the modernist myth of progress has generated and cannot tackle, it surprises me how powerfully it still animates almost all mainstream responses to the crisis.”
  • Should we be trying to create a circular urine economy? [Ars technica] “Urine diversion could solve a lot of the environmental problems that plague overwhelmed wastewater treatment systems, but it’s a whole different way of thinking.”
  • How To Deflate An SUV Tyre. [Tyre Extinguishers]. “Because governments and politicians have failed to protect us from this danger, we must protect ourselves.”
  • Useless Car.
  • Silicon Valley’s Push Into Transportation Has Been a Miserable Failure. [Gizmodo] The titans of tech brought plenty of disruption to our broken transportation system but delivered little in the way of innovation.
  • The global warming reduction potential of night trains. [Back on Track] “Back-on-Track, a European network of night train initiatives, has examined air passenger numbers in the EU in 2019 to see which air connections could be replaced by night train connections.”
  • The attack on rail. [Compact Magazine]. “Disorder, war, and general chaos have conspired to prevent what ought to have been the global triumph of the railway.”
  • Chronotrains. This map shows you how far you can travel from each station in Europe in less than 5 hours.
  • Orbis. ORBIS allows us to express Roman communication costs in terms of both time and expense. By simulating movement along the principal routes of the Roman road network, the main navigable rivers, and hundreds of sea routes in the Mediterranean, Black Sea and coastal Atlantic, this interactive model reconstructs the duration and financial cost of travel in antiquity.
  • Fuck Off Google.
  • After self-hosting my email for twenty-three years I have thrown in the towel. The oligopoly has won. [Carlos Fenollosa]
  • FreedomBox. FreedomBox is a private server for non-experts: it lets you install and configure server applications with only a few clicks. It runs on cheap hardware of your choice, uses your internet connection and power, and is under your control.
  • Old age isn’t a modern phenomenon – many people lived long enough to grow old in the olden days, too. [The Conversation] It’s incorrect to view long lives as a remarkable and unique characteristic of the “modern” era.
  • The Healing Power of “Bello”. [Craftsmanship Quarterly] How an intentional community in Italy uses craftsmanship—and a sense of family—to holistically rehabilitate people who are suffering from drug addiction.
  • The making and knowing project. “The Making and Knowing Project is a research and pedagogical initiative in the Center for Science and Society at Columbia University that explores the intersections between artistic making and scientific knowing. Today these realms are regarded as separate, yet in the earliest phases of the Scientific Revolution, nature was investigated primarily by skilled artisans by means of continuous and methodical experimentation in the making of objects – the time when “making” was “knowing.””

The Future is Degrowth

July 28, 2022 by kris de decker Filed Under: Economy

Quoted from: Schmelzer, Matthias, Andrea Vetter, and Aaron Vansintjan. The Future is Degrowth: A Guide to a World Beyond Capitalism. Verso Books, 2022.

These days, with growing interest in degrowth, it seems that almost every other week another humourless columnist for a major newspaper writes a criticism of degrowth. This is to be expected and even, to a certain extent, welcomed: the more those in positions of power rail against degrowth, the more people who might be sympathetic to it, who would otherwise not have heard about it, are exposed to it.

And, indeed, it also fulfils degrowth’s initial goal as a provocation, a conversation starter, a shit-disturber. Yet, usually, these columnists show little understanding of what degrowth means – and so their objections tend to badly miss the mark. [Read more…]

What to limit, and how and why

July 5, 2021 by Francis Rogers Filed Under: Economy, Ivan Illich, Technology

A common argument made by proponents of degrowth, supported by historical evidence, is that economic growth is ecologically unsustainable and entails an increasing inequitable distribution of resources. In Tools for degrowth? Ivan Illich’s critique of technology revisited, Silja Samerski discusses Ivan Illich’s (1926-2002) argument that limits to growth are needed not only for ecological or distributive justice, but for social freedom. Any limits must be politically decided, and applied not primarily to the economy, but to technology. [Read more…]

“Diseconomies of Scale”: High-tech Versus Low-tech Supply of Eggs

July 13, 2019 by kris de decker Filed Under: Economy, Farming, Gardening, Random

Summarized from [paywall]: Trainer, T., A. Malik, and M. Lenzen. “A Comparison Between the Monetary, Resource and Energy Costs of the Conventional Industrial Supply Path and the “Simpler Way” Path for the Supply of Eggs.” Biophysical Economics and Resource Quality 4.3 (2019): 9.

Traditional housing for chickens in Zembe, Mozambique. By Ton Rulkens – Traditional housing 2, CC BY-SA 2.0.

Global sustainability requires large-scale reductions in rich world per capita resource use rates. Globalised, industrialised and commercialised supply paths involve high resource, energy, dollar and other costs. However, “The Simpler Way” involving small-scale integrated localised settlements and economies can enable enormous reductions in these costs. This study uses input–output analysis of one product, eggs, to illustrate how big the difference between the two paths can be. [Read more…]

I’m not optimistic, but that doesn’t make me a pessimist

March 20, 2019 by kris de decker Filed Under: Economy, Quotes

Environmental scientist Giorgos Kallis in Knowable Magazine:

“We know there were civilizations that flourished in periods where they did not necessarily expand economically. Greece in the classical period would be an example. And many civilizations tried to put limits on how much money an individual could accumulate, or how much money you can lend, or interest rates. We have examples where we know society tried to limit and tame this self-perpetuating character of growth. And we know there are societies that flourished without having constant growth.”

“The easy but stupid critique to that is, “Oh, you want us to go back and be like hunter-gatherers or live like the Romans?” No, that’s not the point. We’re not saying look at how other civilizations are better, we’re saying let’s study other civilizations to get ideas about how things could potentially work differently in our society”.

Do you think we’ll get this figured out in time?

“I’m not optimistic. To think that tomorrow people will wake up and come to their senses and realize that climate change is a huge problem and economic growth is unnecessary, and take action on that? No, I don’t think this will happen. But this doesn’t make me a pessimist. History has always been dire. I don’t think I’d be better off living 100 years ago, having two world wars in front of me, or facing famines. History never stops, and constantly there’s a moment of fighting for things to be better.”

“The last 200 years, we lived in a capitalist society where growth is fundamental for the stability of the system. Maybe there is no alternative, and the only way is to have growth. If this is becoming catastrophic, what do we do? Do we bow our heads to catastrophe, to disaster, or can we think outside of that? We know that we humans are very inventive. Why can’t we think of alternatives? Why is this the only thing where we can’t think differently?”