by fulltimestudent 16 Replies latest social current
I continue to pray that we can achieve any one or all of certain technical goals anytime now.
Free energy - or at least a different and universal alternative energy source
Life span extension
At least, a much better battery (AKA "the bettery"). This alone would radically reshape the world politically and economically.
I hope, I hope.......
metatron
Wouldn't extended lifespans be throwing fuel on the fire of overpopulation?
I guess we often think of an improvement in the way most people live in a similar way to prof. Rosler, I posted this thread after seeing some examples of simple things that could change peoples lives for the better. Sadly, these simple things may make not people rich, so they do not get promoted.
So with the possibility that someone/something may help, here's some simple things:
First simple cooling. btw, something like this was used in Australia. I was born somewhere around a crossover point, where now common household goods started to become available and affordable.
In 1944, my father made an icebox. Built out of solid timber -with an inner and outer case and sawdust insulation. Cooling was by a block of ice, frozen at the local meatworks, (they had an ammonia plant and could freeze lots of ice). It extended the safe period for keeping meat and milk etc.
An even simpler method could be seen in some homes. Just a gauze covered cupboard, over which you hung wet bags, evaporative cooling did the rest. Not highly effective but better than nothing.
A similar concept is at work in this device, used for hundreds of years:
Apognophos:
Wouldn't extended lifespans be throwing fuel on the fire of overpopulation?
Yes! it could.
But in defence I point out that the best birth control method is prosperity. People with no money do use sex as recreation, and without access to birth control it results in, kids. It costs nothing to feel nice for a couple of hours.
In fact, prosperity (to an extent) has overwhelmed procreation in Japan. On present trends, the population will halve by the year 2100.
In first world countries, birthrates sag also. In Russia (and the Ukraine) birthrates are down,- for likely different reasons.
China forced their birthrate down, but increasing prosperity seems to have decreased the desire to procreate in China also.
So maybe longer lives and more prosperity give people an alternative to kids.
In my local supermarket, solar powered garden lights can be bought for $2. I've got no idea how long they'd last, but jeeez, I can't even buy a cup of coffee anymore for two bucks (not even at maccas).
So look at the potential in this lot:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jd2mt64zi7k#aid=P9Ozwms3thY
You could make something like that to light rooms in a house. Stick it out in the sunshine every day, bring it in at night to light the rooms. Kids can now do their homework at night.
So maybe longer lives and more prosperity give people an alternative to kids.
Interesting, I hadn't thought of that. It reminds me of the fact that long-lived families have kids further apart. The Southerners I live around are often grandparents at 35 (and die in their sixties), whereas in my family we don't have any kids until our mid-thirties, and often live to our nineties.
A similar concept is at work in this device, used for hundreds of years
There's also the Einstein refrigerator.
FTS,
When living in the home place has nothing left but drudgery then the young do leave in every country. It happens here as someone pointed out above.
A troubling matter for land use is that the traditional use of land by indigenous people may not be documented and the government or corporations can take it over "legally". This of course happened in the U.S. and it is hardly ever even given a thought.
The land never can return to the sons and daughters of those who live on the flanks of hills and rivers.
Money will rule mens lives. Not the earth, the wind, water, and sun.
And we are able as you have mentioned to lift the burdens off each other's backs with simple inventions--but again as you said: there's no money in it.
But, in time, money won't give us the earth,water, and air that we sold away.
We do have to value the ones who have lived close to the earth without title to it--they have some natural entitlement, don't they?
