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Could a partial answer to the power question be a large-scale bike system merging the power from people pedaling (probably some hydraulics in there) to drive a generator?

It seems that people could burn a few calories and generate substantial kilowattage with a bit of clever engineering.

Same concept applied to an Archimedes pump bringing seawater to the top of a gravity-driven reverse-osmosis purification plant could increase arable land.

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We built a setup like this where four people would power a monitor with sound and a small video player to show short movies like Big Buck Bunny. The point was to demonstrate how utterly inefficient this power generation method is.

So, by the time enough people were put in parallel, the problem would move to maintaining literally hundreds of bicycle devices, swapping out crews of sweaty bodies with fresh meat, and then keeping everyone hydrated and medically fit.

Sounds like we're several innovations away.

Let's put Elon Musk on the task.

Elon is already on the task. Only he is being realistic and producing something outside of cynical reddit-style BS.

I just had to point out that a similar idea was incorporated in the second episode of Black Mirror. It's one of my favorite shows, don't know if you're a fan.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fifteen_Million_Merits

Never heard of it. Thanks!

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