Ed:

Suggested additions to bibliography

Bettman, 'The Good Old Days: They Were Terrible!' J. Jacobs, 'The Fall and Rise of Great American Cities' Kunstler, 'The Geography of Nowhere'

A number of correspondents seem to question the value of current technology and to advocate the use of alternative or appropriate technology in its place. A few facts:

Lots of people have had the idea of small, green villages where people could live in bucolic bliss. This vision has already given us scads of suburbs. The suburbs are Kunstler's nowhere: neither city nor country. Jacobs and Kunstler make fairly convincing cases that suburbs are not very good places to live.

The alternative or appropriate technology people tend to want something that is a spread-out suburb. They don't say why this will work this time, when it didn't work in the past.

Bettman, on the other hand, documents the smells and sights of yesteryear. These include the stockyards and factories of Chicago (gag), and the malarial towns of the old West, where a tide of horse manure flooded the streets durning a rain. He has pictures of women worn out early cooking before a range in the summer and washing the clothes every Monday.

Philosophers have been blaming technology for man's sins and seeking salvation in simpler techology at least since Agricola's time, and probably since ancient times. This impulse to romanticize rural life is very strong. If we do go technologically backward, I think it will be a great mistake.

-- Dick Patton (patton@ra.msstate.edu), August 15, 1999

Answers

Dick, I think there is a lot of truth to what you are saying. I am not suggesting alternative technology/low technology titles here so much because I think that this will lead to some sort of agrarian utopia. Ed has established the topic on this web site, and it is: how to rebuild. My point is if things get bad enough and the modern technological infrastructure gets damaged bad enough, we are going to have to figure out some steps to get us from there back to here.

In many ways, the problem might be a little bit like WWII. The technology existed to make cars, tires, gasoline, and a whole range of household goods. However, due to other national priorities (i.e., fighting a war), the industrial resources were not allocated to making those goods widely available to the general public. Thus, the general public needed to figure out how to do without them for a while.

We might be facing a different but somewhat similar situation this time. There may be some production facilities up and running, but for a wide range of products we may be running at far below our present capacity for a long time. There might be a lot of folks living in a lot of places who may indeed need to turn to these low-tech solutions.

-- Stefan Stackhouse (stefans@mindspring.com), August 16, 1999.

This is a continuation of my answer to Dick -- hit the submit button prematurely.

Dick, I agree with you that much of the nostalgia for the old days, old ways, is overly romantic and misinformed. We have made some genuinely positive improvements in our physical well being, and we shouldn't want to give those up.

It is nevertheless true that "progress" has been at least a little bit of a mixed bag, unfortunately. Alongside all of those wonderful improvements, there have been at least a few downsides. You mentioned one of them in the basic unlivability of the suburbs. There are other downsides as well, with the vulnerability of society to problems like Y2K being another good example.

The question is: is it possible to have it both ways? Or is it at least possible to strike some sort of balance which preserves for us as many as possible of the positive benefits of technological progress, while simultaneously keeping to a minimum the negative downsides associated with such progress?

I think that balance is what most of us here are really searching for. I'm not at all sure that I have all the answers. One thing I do feel reasonably sure about: we need to turn away from the notion that just because something is technologically possible, therefore it MUST be done. It would seem to me that at the very least, we need to perform some sort of social calculus weighing the anticipated benefits and costs of any new technology before it is employes. I don't know how to do that, I don't even know if it is really even possible to do that. But I'd like to find out.

I also have a very firm bias against the big and in favor of the small, against the global and in favor of the local, against the complex and in favor of the simple, against the centralized and in favor of the decentralized. These are not hard and fast rules, only a bias. It is a bias derived mostly from a study of human history. I have found that both Murphy and Lord Acton were right. Anything that can go wrong will go wrong, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

-- Stefan Stackhouse (stefans@mindspring.com), August 16, 1999.

Stefan:

I understand your problem. However, I think you need to rethink your biases.

After a considerable amount of study, I came to the conclusion that it was the consumer, not the producer, who was at fault. I don't think having small, inefficient producers helps. Example: in the town library, there is a 1977 book on fireplace inserts. Nice book. Nearly all of the manufacturers are out of business today. I recently pruchased a hearth-mounted woodstove. It is pretty nifty because it is non-polluting (within limits). It was made by a large manufacturer (Jotul). My point is that small, local manufacturers would probably never have believed that such a design was possible. Moreover the technology to develop this technology - things like instruments to measure particulate emissions and computational flow programs to model flow inside the stove - would be totally unavailable if everything were 'small and beautiful'.

On the other hand, I see waste everywhere because consumers demand wasteful products. Enormous houses and cars, vast 24 oz steaks, bigger is better etc. We'd be better off if we could convince him (and her) to simplify his life a little bit. Business doesn't build products that no one wants, so if you want to start somewhere, start laughing at the owners of pretentious houses and enormous SUV's.

Just a thought.

-- Dick Patton (patton@ra.msstate.edu), August 16, 1999.

Maybe we SHOULD shift towards ALTERNATIVE technology. If Stephen is right, we might find that some of the STANDARD technology is not working and we will have to come up with ALTERNATIVE methods to get by.

I agree with Dick that the consumer "votes" with his spending, but let's be honest and admit that the "large" companies use some of those "votes" to hire ad agencies that help us to "keep our votes coming".

Let's use one small example. Take one of Dick's rich homeowners driving an immense SUV. Let's say that this is not a Boomer who just leases the car. This is an exec who cashed out a bunch of options and the SUV was paid for in cash. The guy decided he couldn't have his eight year old Subaru in the driveway of his new house. So he forks out $40,000 for a car that makes him feel good. If he had spent the same money on a nice solar water heating system and a decent PV bank, he could feel good that he had made a good step towards being free of the companies that provide him with energy. He could feel good that his home was just a little bit less polluting.

When was the last time either of you saw an ad on primetime TV trying to convince you how nice it would be to be the owner of a top of the line solar installation?

Maybe it will be possible to develop technical solutions where a "neighborhood" can afford to invest in some high-tech methods for very localized treatments of sewage, well water, compost, etc. One example would be that small groupings of about 25 homes would invest in and manage a midsized electrical generation facility. For example, a decent sized fuel cell installation which burned a hydrocarbon, could supply electricity to 25 homes and use the waste heat to heat a small community pool or a small community center. With 1000s of such units in a large town, all linked to a grid, complete shutdown of all electric in the town would be hard to imagine.

In the same way that individual homeowners with wells often install water softeners and other water treatment filters, why shouldn't the technology be made available to install mid-sized treatment plants which would prepare drinking water for a discrete number of homes.

Human sewage waste has a large amount of useful nutrients. It may take 5 years for an outhouse to be acceptable as compost, but with a bit higher-tech methods, that can be shortened to a few months. The solutions are expensive to homeowners, but affordable to neighborhoods if they are designed in from the start.

America knew back in the 70's that they were slaves to the car. America has in the meantime built an immense number of new homes on newly developed land and continued to make most of the same mistakes.

-- Thom Gilligan (thomgill@eznet.net), August 17, 1999.

Let's hear it for large SUVs... Actually, I used to have one (before they were cool). It was perfect for towing my 25' sailboat and trailer. It was also very useful for certain difficult roads in incliment weather (read blizzards). In that case, I, an informed consumer, made a rational choice to have a vehicle that met MY criteria, from among a large selection in the market. Yeah, it used more gas than others...but they wouldn't have done the job required. I was more than willing to pay for the extra gas. We need to allow the end user to decide what meets his/her requirements, rather than prejudging what others should have... I guess that this argument is for a (mostly) free economy.

-- Mad Monk (madmonk@hawaiian.net), August 17, 1999.

Thom:

Unfortunately, many of the things you are advocating (with the best intentions) probably will not work. Fuel cells are very expensive and need fuel reformers. Until the technology is much better proven than it is I would not advise it for community power generation. Utilities are installing gas turbines, which are low csot, low maintenance and reasonably efficient.

Solar engineering has been a failure. In general, the alternative energy systems don't save much and aren't very environmentally friendly. For example, digging coal gives 20 BTU (approximately) for every BTU expended, while making PV cells and using them gives about 1.5 BTU for every BTU expended to make the cells, transport them, install them, plus energy for the batteries, the cell holders, etc. You can run an industrial economy on 20:1, but not on 1.5:1.

Before we run off the deep end, how about some stuff that does work. How about air conditioners with SEER of 14-16, rather than an SEER of 9? How about insulating windows, which actually reduce heat loss (or gain) by a factor of 3? How about metal roofs for warm climates, which save immense amounts on the cooling bills. How about energy efficient appliances? How about efficient furnaces?

The difference is that everything I have listed above will give you a decent return on your investment (6-8%, minimum) and will add to the resale value of a house. I'd feel better about investments in alternative energy if I saw that the proper investments in conservation had been made. This is not the case.

Mad Monk:

I'm glad someone bought and used an SUV because they needed its capabilities. Auto companies keep track of how their vehicles are being used, and 98% of SUVs never leave the pavement, except when they roll over.

-- Dick Patton (patton@ra.msstate.edu), August 17, 1999.