I am finding in my life that some of the newer generation materials and products are starting to simplify. They are reducing the amount of resources, complexity and production steps it takes to do a job. The technology behind them is maturing technology with decades of development that are gradually looking to save costs by making simpler products that do more than the older more complex version for less.
The new synthetic line that is being used in the standing rigging in sailboats is one example. One hundred years ago you still saw rope rigging with deadeys and lashings holding up the masts. With technology came lines made of steel and then stainless steel, that were smaller and lighter. It was much stronger and lasted for decades between replacing it as opposed to a life span of a few years to just months. It’s downside is that there were a lot of special fittings that needed special tools to maintain it and usually you needed a rigger to work on it. It wasn’t simple. Today we are back to fiber lines being used with deadeyes and lashings again. Only this time they are stronger by a factor of three or more than the stainless steel lines, eight times lighter. We have gone through the technological life cycle from better but more complex to much better and back to much more simple to use.
Electric cars are an emerging technology that is also a good example. Gradually as new battery technologies are providing the energy density needed to realistically power a car we are moving from internal combustion engines that have thousands of parts to more efficient electric motors that have a small handful of parts and require less maintenance over the lifetime of the product.
Supported by the increases in solar energy harvesting through sun and wind technology’s this is an exciting time of change. The thing to watch is the evolution of the initial technology’s and percent gain in efficiency’s over time both in the end product and the manufacturing process. Solar cells are now many times more efficient than the first generations of them and we have new generations that are as simple to make as running the substrate through a printer to print solar panels.
All these things mean for you and I that we are starting to get more efficient products at cheaper costs that allow us to build and power or little houses for less and live for less while maintaining a lifestyle that is above living in a cave huddled around a fire. I want my little house and home garden to come with hot and cold running water, global communications, frozen storage of food, vacuum storage of food, access to modern medicine when my wife has our first child, plus a whole host of other amenities that make up the difference between living hand to mouth in that cave around a fire and what is possible today.
If I lived 200 years ago I would not live as long nor have the freedom to chose many of the things I can choose to be or do.. Just surviving for my shorter life span would take up the majority of my life unless I was one of the very few privileged wealthy and or powerful people. In this day and age I am extremely poor, yet I have access to and use medical technology that even the wealthiest of people 60 yeas ago did not have. I have access to enough food for less effort than through out most of history and I don’t have feast and famine seasons because I can store food through the winter or purchase at reasonable prices food from the other side of the planet where it is now in season. Taking away that I have to pay taxes on my land to keep it; I own my own land and house and even a boat that I can live on.. Did I mention that by US standards I am poor? below the governments specified poverty level. I feel pretty wealthy myself, considering where my family came from economically.
Now… I know that someone out there is thinking that there are many people around the world that this isn’t true for and that the US is living unfairly luxurious lives compared to these people. Consuming more than our fair share of the resources.
I’ve been to other countries… All of them that are poor and starving are that way not because of how much we consume but because of their governments or cultures. They starve because their leaders steal the money, not build public infrastructure such as national road system that make the transport of goods cheaper. Or they have groups that hate each other and bomb themselves back into the stone age on a regular basis.
The reason that we as a culture do so well is due to the more than average success of the rule of law and systems of representative government that we and most of the rest of the 1st world nations have adopted.
You don’t have to pay bribes to the cops or other government functionary’s and when it does happen eventually someone goes to jail because as a society as a whole we do not accept that kind of dishonest behavior. (though I fear that as a society we are starting to lose those behaviors of honesty, integrity and respect)
We all know that graft does happen.. it isn’t the norm but even when it does its usually not out right theft of public moneys but the preferential giving of contracts to one company over another… The roads still get built. That is one of the major keys in our wealth and prosperity as a nation. THE ROADS STILL GET BUILT. The majority of the money whether spent wisely or foolishly by our government gets spent building something not just put directly into someones pocket.
This is just a rant and not a polish or finished thought on any of these subjects.
scott
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