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⬅️ Previous capture (2023-12-28)
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Many low-tech and small-tech movements have a focus on stewardship. They embrace old technology because they argue that throwing away a tool before its useful life is over is wasteful. Similarly, keeping a small technological footprint and replacing inefficient electrical systems with mechanical or human-powered ones reduces out impact on the planet.
There are other sides of low tech that interest me more. I'm fascinated with old, small, and alternative tech because of its DIY potential. Instead of needing to rely on a massive supply chain and an intricate global logistics network to get the things we use, we might be able to make other tools ourselves that can do just fine.
I'm curious what the limit of such alternate tech might be. For example, is it possible to make something that generates electricity, using only parts that come from one's local environment? No purchased wires, no outsourced chemicals, no materials--raw or processed--from somewhere else. Maybe it is; maybe it isn't.
If we make things a little less strict, is it possible to build a computing device from scratch, with no off-the-shelf components? Is it possible to make one's own transistor (or something that acts like one) without needing highly specialized tools in a manufacturing facility? What calculations can be performed with flowing water, grains of sand, sundials, gimbals, or other analog phenomena? Can data be stored in simple analog forms, processed by an analog machine in an automated fashion, and transmitted to another analog machine somehow?
A great example of this type of tech is the Water Integrator.^ This ingenious machine was developed in the Soviet Union in the 1930s to solve partial differential equations that did not have analytical solutions. It was originally used to study heat dissipation in concrete, but eventually many scientific fields found use for the integrator, and production versions were widely used in many Eastern Bloc countries until the 1980s.
I often feel that since computers can model and make calculations on any problem, only limited by computational resources, modern society has fallen into a rut of using computers to do everything. If a single tool can do anything, why not use it to do everything? But there's a lot of scientific and engineering merit to exploring what other forms of technology can do, beyond electronics and digital systems.
It could be the case that many people have already explored things like this, and they found there really is precious little that can be done using analog computation. I doubt that's the case: I suspect there's been little impetus to research the subject since digital computers are so good at what they do.
If anyone has more resources on home-built technology, I'd love to hear about it.
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[Last updated: 2023-12-06]