Comment by leggomylibro | Hacker News Reader

Comment by leggomylibro | Hacker News Reader

I kind of wonder why there aren't neo-luddite communities literally re-inventing the wheel, these days.

The Amish seem to pride themselves on their ascetic use of technology - it sounds like they believe in the discipline, patience, and lack of distractions that come with a disdain for tools which have not yet been refined by a long history of use.

Why does nobody take that attitude with the production of say, bipolar transistors instead of wood stoves? Why don't we have any community-run film deposition machines? Throw together a cruelty-free hand-milled pressure chamber, a bespoke hand-wound HV transformer, an artisanal gluten-free vacuum pump, and you've got yourself a stew!

I don't think Jeri Ellsworth counts as a prophet quite yet, but I might read that sort of holy book. The article mentions the Amish's occasional use of personal solar cells and batteries for household electricity despite a prohibition of connecting public utilities to a house; wouldn't it be more kosher to make the solar panels and batteries yourselves? We ARE getting to the point where 'electricity' is a tried-and-true, fundamental human tool. Why is say, a metal-air battery particularly different from a saw or a hammer or a match?

> The article mentions the Amish's occasional use of personal solar cells and batteries for household electricity despite a prohibition of connecting public utilities to a house

The Amish are not isolationists. They are fine with trading with non-Amish communities. They just want to preserve their communities and values, and believe that they may have trouble doing so if they become too dependent on non-Amish communities.

From what I've read, the reason most Amish communities do not connect to the public electrical grid is that they believe that would make them too dependent. In most places there is only one grid provider and so you are putting all your eggs in one basket if you become dependent on electricity and you get it from the grid.

If you use electricity but get it from solar cells or batteries or a gas/diesel/LNG/propane generator, you generally have multiple sources. It is still a dependency, but it is just a general trade dependency rather than a dependency on a single source.

> wouldn't it be more kosher to make the solar panels and batteries yourselves?

Amish generally are fine with using things that they did not make themselves. They use metal tools, but generally don't mine the metal themselves. They wear cotton clothes, but generally don't grow the cotton themselves or weave the fabric themselves.

For a good look at the Amish approach to technology, see the article "Amish Hackers" [1].

[1] http://kk.org/thetechnium/amish-hackers-a/

What is so special about transistors? There are many non-linear active devices that are relatively unexplored due to the local maximum of transistors. How about homemade flame triodes or magnetic amplifiers or memristor.. I think you are going to love these guys:

http://www.sparkbangbuzz.com/

http://ludens.cl/Electron/Electron.html

Just an example; film deposition is useful for all kinds of things, including producing solar cells, but a single BJT or FET seemed like a fairly simple starting point.

Thanks for the links!

You've just described a large subset of the HAM community ;).

Marx's Theory of Alienation argued that individuals in modern, mechanistic, specialized and capitalist societies see people become estranged from the fruits of their labor. He argued that they lose connection between ones own self worth, and what one produces. In his mind this dehumanized people and society.

Personally, I'm not a Marxist, but I think he was right about this.

Whatever that intangible human aspect it is he was talking about -- At some point tech and science is probably sufficiently abstracted from normal human experience such that this concept is no longer relevant.

Also, on this topic I really recommend reading Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, a thought-provoking book on quality of life in our age of human interaction with technology.

What about people like RMS who refuses to use non-Free(Libre) software and hardware? Aren't they somewhat like digital Amish, albeit with a focus on a different set of moral values?

> A disdain for tools which have not yet been refined by a long history of use.

An uncharitable person might call that disdain parasitic, inasmuch as technological advances in the last couple of centuries have proceeded to a large extent through consumerism. The Amish feel free to use the resulting innovations, but because they themselves refuse to be a consumerist society they do not contribute to the process that sustains and brings forth those innovations.

Northern Indiana actually has relatively high penetration rates for residential solar installations largely thanks to the Amish/Old Order Mennonite communities in the area. In comparison to lighting your home with gas, solar and battery systems can look pretty cheap.

As others have pointed out, technology more likely to be accepted so long as it doesn't threaten the cohesion of the community.

A large part of audiophile community is doing exactly that, using old or outdated technology, just because it feels right.

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