Smarter Technology
“No, I’m not some old hippie or off-the grid survivalist. I’m a big city guy who really likes modern technology, especially computers. But when does the heavy application of technology become overkill?...
View ArticleHow Far Back?
On the appeal of steampunk: “Compared with an earlier and more thoroughly handcrafted era, a return to the late 1800s or early 1900s does not mean having to give up all the most basic modern...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Good Question
“How much of what we readily identify as ‘progress’ in urban-industrial society is really the undoing of evils inherited from the last round of technological innovation?” Quoted from: “Where the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
City Life – Lessons in Vanity
“Already in the western world and Japan millions of city-dwellers and suburbanites have grown accustomed to an almost hermetically sealed and sanitized pattern of living in which very little of their...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The declining marginal return of research and development
The decreasing benefits from specialized, derivative work, viewed from the perspective of the overall history of science, are acquired at substantially greater cost. The costs to societies of early...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Characteristics of Modern Technique (1)
“The one best way”: so runs the formula to which our technique corresponds. When everything has been measured and calculated mathematically so that the method which has been decided upon is...
View ArticleThe Misanthrope’s Guide to the End of the World
“Garbage eschatology (I claim credit for this neologism) is based on the premise that our technological infrastructure has acquired too much complexity for us to fix. It will kill us not by turning...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Characteristics of Modern Technique (2)
“The great feat of medieval technics was that it was able to promote and absorb many important changes without losing the immense carryover of inventions and skills from earlier cultures. In this lies...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Characteristics of Modern Technique (3)
“The type of work which modern technology is most successful in reducing or even eliminating is skilful, productive work of human hands, in touch with real materials of one kind or another. In an...
View ArticleJudging Technology
Ran Prieur started an interesting initiative: TechJudge, in which a rating system is applied to different technologies. “In this age, ‘judging technology’ means one of two things: reviewing a...
View ArticleClik here to view.
What Technology Wants
All the modern thingslike cars and suchhave always existed they’ve just been waiting in a mountainfor the right moment listening to the irritating noisesof dinosaurs and peopledabbling outside all the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Celebrating the Luddite Uprisings
“November 2011 – January 2013 marks the 200th anniversary of the Luddite uprisings, in which artisan cloth workers smashed machines which were destroying their trades, undercutting wages and forcing...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The Religion of Complexity
“The reaction of most people when I tell them I’m a scythe teacher is the same: incredulity or amusement, or polite interest, usually overlaid onto a sense that this is something quaint and rather...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Discussing the Politics of Technology
Breaking the Frame is a low-tech event held in the UK next weekend. “Technology dominates our world, but many people think ‘its just a neutral tool’ or that technology = progress. Although it does...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Automated Ethics & Driverless Cars
“Modern motor vehicles are safer and more reliable than they have ever been – yet more than 1 million people are killed in car accidents around the world each year, and more than 50 million are...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Cargo Cults
“The John Frum movement on the Oceanic island nation Vanuatu is a classic example of what anthropologists have called a “cargo cult”— many of which sprang up in villages in the South Pacific during...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Technology Ages in Reverse
A complex biochar-making toilet. “It will never be deployed anywhere”. Our society is pathologically enthralled with the new. As scientists and engineers in global development, we’re inculcated...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Smart Technology is a Solution Looking for a Problem
Picture by Hans Tak, International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam 2016 Technologies like driverless cars and smart heating systems could end up making cities dysfunctional according to Maarten Hajer,...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Rethink, Retool, Reboot: Technology Justice
Practical Action, the international NGO that uses technology to challenge poverty in “developing” countries, has published a new book that is freely accessible online. Rethink, Retool, Reboot:...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Low tech? Wild tech!
The French scientific magazine Techniques et Culture has published an entire volume about alternative forms of technology: “Low-tech? Wild tech!“. The 300-page issue explores the differences and...
View Article
