AlteredEgo

I’ve been wondering what tech levels would be SELF SUSTAINABLE. Like the amish lifestyle is a circular economy, everything they need they can make themselves, grow themselves, and compost themselves. Like mostly.

But can you have something like electric motors or wind power in the same way? Can you have electronics? Can you have eReader? Like if you had a town the size of 50.000 people.

Theoretically advances in technology could allow for things like biological computing. Like a variety of seeds to produce plants making all sorts of medicine, or single cell cultures then organize into simple electronics. Not sure how sci-fi that is. But in a way that would be a “safe point” for civilization.

Because even after a limited nuclear exchange which is is getting more and more likely each year we’re not going to have any global supply chain left.

Theoretically you could also have a wind powered airplane drawn by kites if there is a large enough difference in wind speed between air layers. A bit nuts though :D Like the airplane is pulled forward or powered by different speed or direction crosswind above or below the plane. Or maybe something like a tandem plane. But it’s brain melting enough to implement this kite control software.

But the ultimate question is always €/kWh and how much embodied energy and material. A simple kite tethered to some deep screw foundation in the earth (or tree stump) is like almost nothing compared to a wind turbine with heavy foundation and tower that needs to resist far greater forces and be transported. This kite power, once you have a simple open design and open source software for electronics is almost low tech. All you do is fly a big kite and draw out a tether from a geared winch to produce electricity. Anyone could build like a 50 kW plant in their backyard which provides energy in the winter and different times than solar. You only need an electric motor as a winch, a simple “glider” drone and something like SoC computer or even just microcontroller. And sensors and wireless connection. The software is rather complicated with takeoff and landing and a standby hover mode right above the winch, and coordination with multiple of these kites.

One issue is regulations with air traffic so you can’t fly these kites too high.

We literally have unlimited power for almost free. Unfortunately we don’t live in a sane world.

This is the wrong approach even though it might be worth experimenting. The correct approach is Kitepower which is simply a kite with minimal electronics to steer and pull out a cable and power a winch. Much simpler and cheaper to build. This produces more power than windmills with far less resources.

Can it change the layout / reflow the text of scientific papers to be single column text? I’m still searching something that makes reading papers on tablets possible.

Afghanistan had a pretty progressive, modern look back then under the monarchy.

1973 Afghan coup d’état - Wikipedia

Saur Revolution - Wikipedia

Is it cheaper? Or brighter?