• The moral and ethical weight of voluntary simplicity. [Simplicity Institute]
• Just enough is plenty: Thoreau’s Alternative Economics. [Simplicity Institute]
• Like start-ups, most intentional communities fail — why? [Aeon]
• A sacred light in the darkness: winter solstice illuminations at Spanish missions. [Conversation]
• Aid in reverse: how poor countries develop rich countries. [The Guardian]

Video:

• The birth of a wooden house. Via Fernando Spalding.
• Primitive Technology: Termite Clay Kiln & Pottery.
• Happy People, A Year in Taiga. Via Jon Batzel.
• Japanese Tiny House on Wheels.Via Ed Carey.
• Thousand-year-old windmills still in use. Via Rick Otten.

• God in the machine: my strange journey into transhumanism. [The Guardian]
• Should you feel sad about the demise of the written letter? [Aeon]
• A year without a byte [code.flickr.com]
• When power is low, I often hack in the evenings by lantern light. [joey hess]
• Olimex Open Source Laptop. [hackaday]
• Why we can’t look away from our screens. [NYT]
• Why I am not going to buy a cellphone. [Aeon]
• Forget smartphones — the Nokia 3310 is still the mobile of the future. [The Guardian]
• Pause! We can go back. [New York Review of Books]
• And their eyes glazed over. [Aeon]
• The analog spaces in digital companies. [New Yorker]

Links via Roel Roscam Abbing, Aaron Vansintjan & Mark van den Borre.

• Biggest Spike in Traffic Deaths in 50 Years? Blame Apps [NYT]
• The Analog Spaces in Digital Companies [The New Yorker] [Via]
• Smartphone Users Trust Strangers Less [Journalist’s Resource]

• Hail the maintainers. [Aeon]
• The end of upgradable Apple computers. [Motherboard]
• Eye contact is good for you. [Guardian]
• Weapons AI increasingly replacing, not augmenting, human decision making. [Defense One]
• The demoralized mind. [New Internationalist]
• The binge breaker. [Atlantic]
• Crash: how computers are setting us up for disaster. [Guardian]

Last three links via Hunther/Gatherer.

• Welcome to Airspace. [The Verge]
• The World Wide Cage. [Aeon]
• The Moral Economy of Tech. [Idle Words] [Thanks to Gabe Finch]

“Are we fixing the right things? Are we breaking the wrong ones? Is it necessary to start from scratch every time?”

• Solving all the wrong problems. [NYT]
• The Internet of Things has a dirty little secret: it is not really yours. [The Verge]
• Farmers demand right to repair their own tractors. [Modern Farmer]
• How technology disrupted the truth. [Guardian]
• The hand-held’s tale. [Aeon]
• Just us. No Phones.