Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Figures and Tables
- Acknowledgements
- Preface to the English Edition
- Prologue: The Mad Dance of the Shrimps
- Part I The Rise and Fall of ‘Engineering Miracle-Workers’
- Part II The Principles of Simple Technologies
- Part III Daily Life in the Era of Simple Technologies
- Part IV Is ‘Transition’ Possible?
- Epilogue: A Dream If Ever There Was One
- Notes
- Index
Part II - The Principles of Simple Technologies
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 19 March 2021
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Figures and Tables
- Acknowledgements
- Preface to the English Edition
- Prologue: The Mad Dance of the Shrimps
- Part I The Rise and Fall of ‘Engineering Miracle-Workers’
- Part II The Principles of Simple Technologies
- Part III Daily Life in the Era of Simple Technologies
- Part IV Is ‘Transition’ Possible?
- Epilogue: A Dream If Ever There Was One
- Notes
- Index
Summary
Let us summarize the first part of the book. We are concerned about the availability of resources to us in the near future. Our current approach, to push forward as fast as possible using high-tech innovations, will not solve the problems that we face. At best, there are some good ideas, but we will not be able to implement them at the speed and to the extent needed, far from it. At worst, the new technologies and their harmful consequences will only accelerate the issues that have driven us to this impasse. Between the two, pointless technological goodies may falsely delight naïve media, sustainable development advisers, economists and futurologists.
So, is this our destiny? Is a Mad Max style dystopian struggle for survival inevitable? Will we return to the Stone Age, to lighting by candle, to the Middle Ages of Les Visiteurs (take your pick)? Before giving way to fatalistic notions that “anyway it is the fault of the Chinese and Indians who are too numerous” or the survivalist's “it's all going to blow up, I’ll bury a box of assault rifles in my garden”, let's see what other options are available to us.
Even if the demographic question cannot be avoided, it is evident that it does not help us to solve our problems in the short term. With a population of a few tens of millions, we could each have a big 4×4 or even a helicopter and still live comfortably and safely within ecosystem limits. Although I am not certain even of this, because this type of technically advanced consumption probably needs a specific ‘pyramidal’ production structure in state of permanent dynamic imbalance, with many small participants who have a dream of buying a 4×4 which is inaccessible to them.
Our economic and industrial system, like James Dean at the wheel of his car in Rebel Without a Cause, prompts us to push down hard on the accelerator pedal in the hope that we will be able to invent the wings that will allow us to fly off the cliff.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Age of Low TechTowards a Technologically Sustainable Civilization, pp. 49 - 80Publisher: Bristol University PressPrint publication year: 2020