A lot of fascinating things to read, even if just to understand the history

it’s a good reminder to check him out

I think he argued one big technological development of sorts was the development of “technique”, which can in the extreme really regiment a person’s activity into defined actions

yeah I’ve heard of some things like permaculture and no till agricultural methods that make me wonder how productive low tech approaches could be; on the other extreme are hydroponics / aeroponics systems in controlled environments. It seems like we could probably experiment and find more ways to do things than our current system does things

“Amish but Catholic”

Could be kind of, that sounds like a fair approximate characterization, I don’t know what the main differences are in technological acceptance versus religious differences

In principle Catholics don’t seem too anti-technology; this group was more against industrialization and its effects, like I’m not sure they’d be against small industrial home factories whereas I imagine Amish would be

Like Amish I think go to pains to avoid things like electricity and use gas contraptions instead, I don’t think those who identify with the “Catholic Land Movement” would necessarily be against using electricity, or maybe not for the same reasons

this challenge is 🔥

sorry I’m lagging on responding, I’m adapting to life and shakeups in the fediverse

initially negligable

yeah this problem is with tech in general, I think it’s called jevon’s paradox: every time tech is invented, the idea is it will save labor or resources, but people end up just using more resources a lot of times. Like a light bulb that is 10x more efficient, means people just buy 11 more light bulbs instead.

ebooks as being more environmentally friendly

well it’s better than audiobooks or video I think; I think they can possibly be ecofriendly, it may depend on the device you consume on (a desktop computer + monitor would probably consume a lot more energy than a phone or ereader)

speed limit

we don’t have to have a regulation, it could just be a culturally adapted norm (if this is thought to be a good thing); or we could find ways to make better use of data resources

If I can read it instead of watch it, I will

I’ve thought of some experiments like this before, like for instance listening to audio I think is way more energy efficient with headphones versus a speaker (1000x?)

I don’t know if you’re a /datahoarder/ at all but that’s another thought, hard drives only last so long and people buy new ones to keep their data going… I don’t know how sustainable this is but it seems a bit concerning that new hard drives are needed so frequently. /digitalminimalism/ might be a topic worth discussing

The average man does not want to be free. He simply wants to be safe

sometimes freedom is preferred when there are incentives towards it