Ro pedaled home from work, his mind fixed on the thought of sitting down with a good book and relaxing after a long day. As he got down from his bike to put it away, he paused a moment to inspect the front yard. Something had been eating at the cabbage again, and he still had yet to figure out whose cat was making inappropriate use of the carrot patch. It was not quite watermelon season yet, but the gnarled vine bore the promise of many future treats. The front garden only supplied them with maybe a third of their food--few people had enough space (or energy!) to be entirely self-sufficient--but he was proud of what he and his wife had made of it.
Walking the bike into the garage, Ro had to catch his footing over a loose power cord. He'd forgotten to plug the car in. With the plug back in its socket, he checked the vehicle's tension level to make sure it would be fully wound for tomorrow. The news had been reporting rain in the coming days, and he didn't want to have to face that on the bicycle. The car had been a bit of an extravagance when he first bought it, and finding qualified mechanics--who wouldn't rip him off, he thought with a twitch--had been difficult. But now that the flywheel cars were starting to gain traction over the older gas and electric-powered models, finding a shop that could properly adjust the spring motor was little bother. Well, no more bother than dealing with any other auto mechanic.
The living room was both welcoming and quiet--it was good to be home. A column of light streamed in through a side window, its warmth highlighting the sleeping tabby. Ro pulled the chain on the light column next to the bookcase, opening a small shutter in the ceiling and allowing the sunlight from the large second-floor skylight to come streaming down the fiber-optic column. The room filled with light, and the tabby lazily looked up from her patch of sun before dozing back off.
Ro grabbed a book from the shelf, and spent a moment poring over the row of records beneath. Biting his lip, he stood there in silent debate before finally sliding The Moody Blues' "Days of Future Passed"--an original antique inherited from his great grandparents, not a modern reissue--off the shelf. Setting the book down on the couch, he carefully set the shiny old disc on the turntable. New records did not shine the way these vinyl antiques used to, but the manufacture of vinyl had all but stopped during his childhood. Many fascinating substances had disappeared from common use in his youth, mostly due either to dwindling resources or environmental unsustainability. Of course, they had been replaced by a flood of new and equally fascinating materials, but Ro was fascinated by antiques.
When he was young, he had begged his mother for a CD player he had seen at an antique store; it had taken great effort on her part to talk young Ro out of it, explaining that not only did it need electricity for operation AND to amplify the sound, but that it was made of printed circuit boards which were not practical to repair when the pieces started to wear out. And since they were all made slightly differently, he'd have to find another part of the EXACT SAME KIND in order to replace a broken part. The boy had difficulty grasping why people had ever been foolish enough to make things that way, much less build a machine that wastes so much electricity for no good reason--most houses got by just fine with a small windmill or a couple of solar panels--but he eventually had to surrender to the impracticality of it. Still, his fascination with old things remained.
A large, potted cactus sat on the floor next to the turntable. The cat had learned long ago to leave it be, and now the only thing that disturbed its silent, monolithic existence was the occasional harvesting. Many of its signature thorns were missing from one side, and many other sections showed signs of recent thorn growth.
Ro pulled open a drawer under the turntable, pushing his hand past a pair of clippers to retrieve a bag of dried thorns. This was the species recommended by the music shop that had sold it to him, and it had been his primary cactus ever since he had started collecting records. He had heard a few people advocating for the new hybrids, but--as in many other ways--Ro was slow to try new things. The car was a very rare exception.
Retrieving a thorn from the bag, he clamped it into the reproducer and set the record playing. As the music came softly echoing through the cabinet into the room, he retrieved his book from the sofa and sat down in his favorite arm chair. Amelia would be home soon, and he was hoping to at least get to the next chapter before dinner.
...My partner and I love antiques. Whenever we want or need something for our home, be it a fan, a piece of furniture, a hat, a lamp, a clock, or any of a wide variety of things, our first response is usually to see if we can salvage or buy an older, used example. We are frequent thrift store shoppers, and both receive and give away a large number of things thanks to services such as Freecycle. We love the idea of a home where the different pieces each tell a story, have a history to them. I am also a big fan of taking old or discarded things and making them useful again, and though this sounds hackneyed, old things are quite often better built, even if less efficient or less feature-rich.
The 20th Century saw an amazingly rapid evolution of technology on all fronts, but implicit in this race forward was a bargain: we traded simplicity and durability for increased functions and a price point that ensured more universal access. In the process, we have redefined our understanding of "better" to primarily focus on a combination of number and complexity of functions, and ease of use. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but certain other factors which used to be important--adaptability, durability, and ease of maintenance and repair--tend to get ignored. So long as it doesn't break immediately, how long an item can be made to last is only a secondary concern for most consumers.
Take, for example, a radio. It seems like everything has a radio built into it today; they are ubiquitous, and they can be built to cost next to nothing and draw very little power. They often consist of a single stamped circuit board, with all the important components contained within a single chip. Most radios offer two bands--AM and FM--volume and tone control, a digital readout of the station tuning, and often a clock with programmable alarm, as well as a number of other features.
By contrast, this is the radio I use most often:
That is a Zenith radio console, from 1938. It's large, it's made of wood, it draws a fair amount of power, it has no clock, and it's just a straight-up radio. It doesn't even have FM, since there was no such thing when it was made.
By any reasonable comparison, the clock radio on your night stand is "better" than my radio. It performs the same function, takes up a LOT less space, has more features, and most likely is higher fidelity. So why do I bring it up?
My Zenith has one thing that your clock radio does not: sustainability. Before computer chips, before printed circuit boards, most electronics were hand built using simple point-to-point wiring. If you were to get inside the large wooden cabinet of my radio, you'd find a metal chassis--basically an open-bottomed box. That chassis has all the major components (the tuning coils, the controls, the dial components, etc.) bolted to it, and everything is individually wired--with actual WIRES, mind you--inside the chassis. The tubes are all installed in sockets for easy removal/replacement, and even if you don't have a schematic, you can simply trace the wiring and map out the circuit yourself without too much difficulty.
When your radio breaks, it will most likely need to be thrown away and replaced. The parts are small, proprietary, and generally not worth the effort to service--when such work is even possible. When my radio breaks, I can simply replace the affected capacitor, resistor, or other piece... and since the circuit is so simple, if I do not have the correct piece (such as a needed tube or an open tuning coil), it is not unthinkable to fashion a workable kludge. As a result, my radio will be around and functioning many decades after yours is so much junk in the landfill. When a CD or DVD player breaks, all you can do is replace the affected logic board, or motor, or other complex, primary component. My radio is all simple capacitors and resistors, generic off-the-shelf parts that are the basic building blocks of all electronics.
Don't get me wrong--the digital revolution has helped democratize everything from the arts to communication to design to access and information in our society, and Daily Kos itself is a prime example of this. But not everything needs to be done at the height of technology--sometimes simpler is better. It's more expensive to build things this way, but one should also consider that this "more expensively made" item can reasonably be expected to last a lifetime or more with occasional maintenance.
Perhaps the radio is not the best example, so let me offer a few more:
- Bicycles. Much has already been written here and elsewhere about cycling, and we all know their pros and cons. Not everyone's situation lends itself to using a bicycle for their primary means of transportation, but it can be argued that this is as much a failing of our approach to community design as it is a restriction. There are plenty of tasks, though, that a decent bike is perfectly sufficient for--it is the single most efficient means of transportation known to man, and (again, with proper care) your bike is a lifetime purchase.
- Clocks. This is a great example of longevity vs. functionality. It's far cheaper to make a more accurate digital clock. However, a decent mechanical clock can last hundreds of years, and requires no power source except the occasional winding.
- Cars. When I was in high school, I used to speculate (only half-seriously) with friends about a spring-powered car. I've never been a big fan of cars--they're a necessary evil, and a significant burden--and we were trying to think of how it might be possible to have a car that did not create horrible levels of pollution, either directly (as with a combustion or steam engine) or indirectly (as with solar or plug-in electrics). The only solution we could come up with was a spring-powered car. Last year, I found an old Popular Science article detailing a car powered by a "super flywheel," a specialized type of spring which could reasonably propel a vehicle for 100 miles or more per winding. All it would need is to be wound up before use, and you would have a theoretically infinite-range vehicle, with no pollution and a very simple and easy-to-work-on design. Of course, it would still need a separate electrical system to run things like headlights, turn signals, and a stereo, but this does not seem like a big challenge. Honestly, if I were rich, I would be quite busy right now licensing these patents and trying to bring something like this to market.
- Phonographs. The original phonographs recreated their sound mechanically, and that is how recorded audio worked for the first 50 years of its existence. In the late 1920s (and more seriously in the 30s), the older acoustic phonographs began to give way to electric models. Electric amplification provided higher fidelity, with lighter equipment that did not wear the record out as quickly. This is why you can't play vinyl records (LPs and 45s) on your Victrola; those machines were designed for shellac discs, and the heavy metal tonearms and sound boxes put enough weight on the needle to shred your vinyl instantly. However, modern lightweight materials could make the acoustic phonograph more practical to revisit. It will never sound as good as an electrically amplified system, but considering the fact that the last major innovation in acoustic phonograph design took place in the 1920s, there are certainly improvements that can be made with what we have learned in the interceding near-century. And besides, isn't having a machine that NEVER needs any power and that will last you the rest of your life worth the potential trade-off in quality?
- Shaving. Like the others, part of the point here is reducing waste. We throw away so much each year--everything is "disposable" in our eyes. Men: how many razors (or razor heads, or razor blades) have you gone through just in the last year? I don't even want to count. However, I know what my answer will be from this point forward: zero. Why? I have started using my great grandfather's straight razor. It requires more care to use, but not only do I get a closer shave, I avoid throwing away all those razors. And since it has also prompted me to start shaving with lather rather than cream, that's another major waste reduction in the form of shaving cream cans.
- Tools and appliances. This varies depending on the task, but there are many instances in which we regularly use gas or electricity where a fuel source is not needed at all. Push mowers are a bit of a pain, but require nothing but a user. The same is true of hand-cranked egg beaters, and simple tools ranging from drills and bores to pedaled jigsaws. Last year I drove from Los Angeles to Portland with a couple of friends, and along the way we stopped at a place called Blue Ox Millworks. They specialize in reproducing antique woodwork for restoration projects, and part of the tour included a demonstration of their collection of human-powered tools. These are mostly vintage pieces from the end of the 19th Century, but they still do their jobs quite admirably. There are certainly cases where power tools become necessary, but the fact that these human-powered alternatives even exist should highlight the fact that we use electricity in a lot of cases where it simply isn't needed.
Now, I'm not trying to say that steps like these will solve the problems of our society. A real long-term solution to our waste, pollution, and sustainability problem requires a fundamental rethinking of the way we function as communities. We will have to completely re-examine the way we interact with each other, how we produce and distribute our food, and how we build both our structures and the things we use every day. That's a very broad image, and a topic for another time. The opening scene in this article is far from painting a complete picture of a functional world. It is simply a glimpse of a few ordinary tasks from an ordinary day in an ordinary life, meant to illustrate some of the small things we can start doing in the meantime while the bigger things--the things that take time and meet heavy resistance--are still being worked on.
As I said, we love antiques. And while I recognize that some things are considered outdated for a reason, there's no reason we can't look to these older ways of doing things for inspiration. There's no reason to discount a solution to a problem simply because it is old, or because a different solution has displaced it. You should look at all the options on the table, and do your best to incorporate the best elements of each.
Human innovation is cumulative. It builds on itself. There's an old saying that those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it. Let me offer an alternative: the more you learn from history, the more tools you have for addressing the problems of today.