Do you Low Tech?

Use to be a high tech junkie, then I realized I spent less on the low tech stuff and it generally lasted longer and performed nearly as well— so long as I knew what I was doing. Sure things would take longer (ever tried to make a meringue with only a hand whisk? Your hand/arm will hurt before you get those pretty peaks)
But I also found I enjoyed them more. I use a Scythe, I want a Sickle.
Don’t own a leaf blower anymore, I found either I don’t know what I’m doing, or its just generally easier to rake them by hand. Less noisy and the kids enjoy helping out or the opposite and scattering them everywhere via jumping/running through them.
Don’t own a snow blower thankfully I have less snow then where I use to live and its more reliable just using a shovel, again quieter doesn’t jam, safer.
Our new house is slowly turning us “Amish-ish” as my wife puts it. Electrical is slowly dying, not a single outlet in the kitchen works anymore except the oven and fridge. So manual coffee grinder (good for giving the kids something in the morning while your making something else), pour over for brewing coffee, no microwave, hand crank egg beater, stove top hand crank popcorn popper (kids love this one!)
Hand saw, generally safer for me and I don’t have working outlets outside. Hand planer this has been very useful for repurposing the fallen apart deck, giving new life to the bad looking but otherwise perfectly good pieces of wood.
I do own a battery powered drill, but for most applications I’ll just use a manual screwdriver. Something’s like drilling a hole or screwing in a screw that doesn’t have a pilot hole it’d be silly to not use it. I have looked into other lower tech variants however, but for the moment its not worth the money and its still working fine, no need to replace it.
No dishwasher, its turned into a kid’s chore and she loves doing it, she’s only 5!
No washer or dryer, the plumbing didn’t work and if the washer doesn’t may as well not use a dryer. Clothes are said to last longer drying on a clothes line, and its free!

Lower tech stuff is quieter, more reliable, more kid friendly, lasts longer. I’m slowly turning this house into a 1900s era home and it feels more homely.
I do miss having more time to do “stuff” but usually that “stuff” didn’t involve my family. Now we work together more and when I’m scything I can talk to my kids and not have to worry as much about them getting too close and the mower kicking something up. They know to watch my swath and generally stay away unless I’m whetting.

If I were to define “Low Tech” it’d be simple construction if electrical otherwise an easy to use simplistic non-electric tool. The distinction is only there as just saying “non-electric” could include my wind-up pocket watch and not include a simple lightbulb, or electrical switch.

For me, low tech means minimal to no gas usage. I have a Fiskars manual lawn mower, and an arsenal of Wolf Gartner manual farming tools. I have 2.5 acres to farm, so we'll see how it goes this season.

Stephan Leaf wrote:

Use to be a high tech junkie, then I realized I spent less on the low tech stuff and it generally lasted longer and performed nearly as well

My husband bought several electronic thermometers about 10 years ago, and one by one, the remote "outdoor" parts died. The last one isn't quite dead, but its displayed measurement has slipped and is off by about 3C rendering it annoying. I went out and bought for far less money, a 16" outdoor thermometer which I screwed to the upright just below the deck railing outside the bedroom window. At night I do need a flashlight to read it, but I always keep one handy for emergencies anyway. Low, reliable tech!

And wrote:

not a single outlet in the kitchen works anymore except the oven and fridge.

Hubby is an electronics engineer and he's rubbed off on me. My reaction was that the "springiness" of the copper in the outlets has worn out and you aren't getting good contact. His immediate reaction is that mice have gotten in and chewed the wires and your house will burn down one of these days. Sooo... if you've got entire circuits that aren't working/aren't being used, please consider turning those off at the breakers, assuming that you haven't already done so? Where electricity is concerned, "dead" does not equate with "not dangerous" - but that's a story for a different thread!

If humans saved their electricity usage for times and uses where it really is the better way, or when disability makes it the only way, I think our planet would be a less polluted place. However, to get back there, we need quality, well-designed manual equipment, and that's not always easy to find.

Re-visiting this thread I found a mention of the Amish and that has me thinking about low tech again.

Amish and Mennonite communities certainly carry the torch for low tech. Yet my understanding is in order to function in the world we live in they do make many compromises and different communities have different standards and permit different solutions.

One of the things that struck me when I've read interviews or watched videos regarding people living Amish lifestyles is that they tend to focus on people connections, face to face conversation, and mindful work. I know there's a lot more to the communities and worldview, but religion is a cider press topic.

To my point, I think that people connections and mindful work are really really valuable results of low-tech.

When I rely on fewer machines I tend to wish I had more people to help me with a task (not always of course). Which lends itself toward cooperation - something I really like.

Mindful work is also a major ideal for me. Throughout my teens and twenties I often found myself constantly distracted from what I was doing. Probably because it was paper work, studying, or something like that. Since I've begun stewarding this tiny plot of land I have the opportunity to do physical work again - repair, building, making. I find that using low tech gives me an opportunity to be focused on only the subject of the work and the tool I'm using. It is immensely satisfying.

Granted, when I do use a power tool, especially one with a spinning blade, I am extremely mindful. I must be so that I don't lose body parts. But I feel like more of my concentration goes into staying safe, and less into the subject of the work.

Interestingly, earlier today Youtube played for me a video on the societal effect of sound with humans. They showed that sound has a major impact on human psychology, even going so far as effecting our sense of taste. One thing they noticed was the difference in sounds that people would have heard on a daily basis in the past. By reconstructing sound from old videos, and looking at places that still operate in an older way, like Venice, they noticed that the main sound people would have heard back then was the human voice. Droning sounds, and loud sounds seem to have a negative effect on humans overall.

The part I reference starts about 12 minutes in.

We have on car for the house hold.
We have a property around the corner from our house where I store things and store material.
This situation has led to me building and rebuilding a variety of wagons and carts.

Great thread, great questions!
Our future homestead/forest hideout is, and will probably remain, largely very low-tech. Not because we are in any way purists (I'm writing this on a laptop, and we have phones to keep in touch with friends and family, etc.) but mainly because it's simply more satisfying and easier for us, in our situation, to go with low-tech. One part is the geographical aspect: Our land is decently far from the nearest road, and many parts are quite steep, so it would be extremely hard or impossible for us to get heavier equipment there even if we wanted to. The wheelbarrow is the heaviest single piece of equipment we've taken so far, and that had to be carried parts of the way since the terrain is just too steep to roll it. Oh, and our build site is a bit more than a hundred meters higher than the lake (our main route of transport). I don't want to think about getting a wood chipper up there (it would probably have to be dismantled and carried bit by bit, and put back together afterwards) and if we wanted a tractor for some reason I honestly can't think of any way that isn't at least semi-suicidal and/or requires wrecking half the forest.

L. Johnson wrote:
Mindful work is also a major ideal for me. Throughout my teens and twenties I often found myself constantly distracted from what I was doing. Probably because it was paper work, studying, or something like that. Since I've begun stewarding this tiny plot of land I have the opportunity to do physical work again - repair, building, making. I find that using low tech gives me an opportunity to be focused on only the subject of the work and the tool I'm using. It is immensely satisfying.

This is also a factor. We've spent this summer building the foundations for our future cabin (really mainly a raised terrace of gravel to give us flat, dry ground to build on, kept in place by an unmortared stone wall). The tools we used were a digging bar (to loosen soil and move big rocks), a shovel, a 10 l metal bucket, and the above-mentioned wheelbarrow. Plus our own hands, and some more hands borrowed from people visiting. We learned a lot, the doing is entirely ours, and we felt the work in a way we wouldn't have if we'd outsourced parts of it either to contractors or machines. It is indeed very satisfying. We are proud every time we look at it.

Another factor is, of course, the environmental. Higher tech tends to require more, and more continuous, use of nasty, unsustainable stuff. If we had a chainsaw, we'd have to keep buying fuel for it. Even if it was electrical and we could somehow generate enough electricity for it, parts will probably break, and there is of course no way we could make new ones by ourselves, from scratch. We are young and physically able, and felling trees with an axe is a joy. Sure, the axe was made possible by mining, which is, hmm, questionable, but it will probably last the remainder of our lives and won't consume any additional resources during that time.

And finally, there is the philosophical or ethical aspect. High-tech is, at least superficially, faster and more efficient than low. But is it really maximum speed and efficiency we're after? Mainstream society as it is today is extremely fast and productive (in a way at least), and it's messing up the planet. With slow, low tech, it's easier to see what you're doing and the impact it has. You won't clearcut 30 hectares of forest in a day using an axe, you fell one tree at a time, after seeing its shape and the shape of the trees around it, you have an idea in mind on how you will use it, and how its absence will affect the forest. To quote Miles Olson:

In every stage [of technological development] the person doing the cutting becomes more removed from the process, more alienated from the individual tree that is being cut. You kill faster, feel less.  

Sorry this turned into quite a long post. I'll just wrap it up by giving my definition of high-tech (and by exclusion of low-tech) societies. As I see it, a society is high-tech when technologies necessary for its functioning are so complex that the principles on which they function are beyond the grasp of the majority of the population. That is, I don't think I'm particularly stupid, but I can't grasp how this laptop works well enough to build one, even in theory. A high-tech society requires fargoing specialization, and that specialization in itself means that a large part of the population will not have the skills to meet their own, everyday needs of food and other necessities, even in theory.

Just my random thoughts.

I consider myself to be a rather low-tech person because that is how I want to be.

Everything I know about computers I taught myself.  I learned just enough to do what I need to function with the thing I love to do.

My previous phone was an older smart phone.  I only used the phone function.

The phone I was given by my carried with the 5g upgrade is a cheap version of my previous phone.  I only use the phone function though businesses insist that I am sent texts.  I can read the and that is all.  If I wanted I could learn to send texts though that is not a function or a thing I want to know how to do.

So I don't use the phone to take pictures.  I use Pinterest for that.

Am I the only person on the forum who doesn't know how to text?  I consider that very low tech.

Anne Miller wrote:I consider myself to be a rather low-tech person because that is how I want to be.

Everything I know about computers I taught myself.  I learned just enough to do what I need to function with the thing I love to do.

My previous phone was an older smart phone.  I only used the phone function.

The phone I was given by my carried with the 5g upgrade is a cheap version of my previous phone.  I only use the phone function though businesses insist that I am sent texts.  I can read the and that is all.  If I wanted I could learn to send texts though that is not a function or a thing I want to know how to do.

So I don't use the phone to take pictures.  I use Pinterest for that.

Am I the only person on the forum who doesn't know how to text?  I consider that very low tech.

In my opinion a smart phone is never low-tech. It isn't about how you use it, it's about the phone being 'high tech' itself. A computer, camera, etc. too, they are all 'high-tech'.

If you write a letter or make a drawing with pen or pencil on paper, that is 'low-tech'. If you search for information in books (in the library), or try to learn more on a subject by asking people, in a 'real life' conversation. Or maybe that is 'no tech'...

Inge Leonora-den Ouden wrote:In my opinion a smart phone is never low-tech. It isn't about how you use it,

I would buy a non-smart phone if I thought it would be better than my current phone.  Do they even sell non-smart phones?

I wasn't saying that the phone was low-tech, I was saying that I am low tech:

I consider myself to be a rather low-tech person because that is how I want to be.

Everything I know about computers I taught myself.  I learned just enough to do what I need to function with the thing I love to do.

Anne Miller wrote:
Am I the only person on the forum who doesn't know how to text?  I consider that very low tech.

Well, I'll have to say that I don't know how to text anyone on a phone since I've never had a cell phone at all, smart or dumb.  The fancy feature of my phone is that it switches between touch tone and pulse.  Actually the feature I like the best is that I can turn the ringer off, which is how it's usually set.  

That said, I'd still consider a phone of any type to be high tech.  However, I suppose this does illustrate that one doesn't have to be only the lowest of low tech or the highest latest most complicated technology.  We have the option to choose what level of technology we wish to live with, to a certain degree anyway.  That reminds me that John Michael Greer wrote a fictional novel about this a few years ago called Retrotopia.  He set it in the United States in 2065.  The basic idea he was exploring was a society that set up regions essentially zoned for different levels of technology.  The taxes one would have to pay would be tied to the level of technology and government services each region chose to have.

David Huang wrote:
That said, I'd still consider a phone of any type to be high tech.  However, I suppose this does illustrate that one doesn't have to be only the lowest of low tech or the highest latest most complicated technology.  We have the option to choose what level of technology we wish to live with, to a certain degree anyway.  That reminds me that John Michael Greer wrote a fictional novel about this a few years ago called Retrotopia.  He set it in the United States in 2065.  The basic idea he was exploring was a society that set up regions essentially zoned for different levels of technology.  The taxes one would have to pay would be tied to the level of technology and government services each region chose to have.

Fascinating. I love the idea, even if it's only fanciful. The idea that you could physically travel to a medieval or age of sail area culture and move on when you were done is thought provoking.

I also really do appreciate that I can choose to use low tech at my convenience. Many people in the world don't have the choice. It is a blessing and a privilege to be sure. I have probably taken that for granted in the past. Similarly, when you're homesteading full-time or doing full-time forestry or earthworks, it makes a lot more sense to use time saving technology. The economy demands a certain pace of production.

I really do think that it would be great if we can use permaculture to design more passive and sustainable systems that allow us to exist at a slower pace where more of us can use low tech solutions mindfully and be connected with our work and the products of our work.

Somehow every time a "time saving" invention is produced it seems to make many of us feel busier than ever. I think the mindset behind the use of technology, be it high or low, is something we don't spend enough time considering. I suppose that is a big part of what "appropriate" technology is all about.

David Huang wrote:...  We have the option to choose what level of technology we wish to live with, to a certain degree anyway.  That reminds me that John Michael Greer wrote a fictional novel about this a few years ago called Retrotopia.  He set it in the United States in 2065.  The basic idea he was exploring was a society that set up regions essentially zoned for different levels of technology.  The taxes one would have to pay would be tied to the level of technology and government services each region chose to have.

My choice is to use different levels of technology for different purposes. I am glad to have the laptop and internet to be able to communicate with people all over the planet. I don't like using the phone (only in cases of emergency). In the garden I use low-tech hand-tools. For knitting too. Sewing I sometimes do by machine (medium tech?), sometimes by hand.

I do not want to go 'back in time'. I think it's time to invent new low-tech tools.
Living in a country divided in 'zones' for different levels of technology doesn't feel attractive to me.

David Huang wrote:Well, I'll have to say that I don't know how to text anyone on a phone since I've never had a cell phone at all, smart or dumb.  The fancy feature of my phone is that it switches between touch tone and pulse.  Actually the feature I like the best is that I can turn the ringer off, which is how it's usually set.  

Do you have a landline or do you use the internet?

What are your secrets to responding to people who say "I'll send you a text"?

Or when they send something and want your signature?

Anne Miller wrote:

David Huang wrote:Well, I'll have to say that I don't know how to text anyone on a phone since I've never had a cell phone at all, smart or dumb.  The fancy feature of my phone is that it switches between touch tone and pulse.  Actually the feature I like the best is that I can turn the ringer off, which is how it's usually set.  

Do you have a landline or do you use the internet?

What are your secrets to responding to people who say "I'll send you a text"?

Or when they send something and want your signature?

I have a landline.  Well, technically my phone company forced me to a VOI (voice over internet?) some time back.  Then since I no longer had a regular landline that works when the power is out/internet is down anyway I switched my phone service to a company called Ooma which also does VOI but I only have to pay the state and federal taxes for it.  I do have some sort of hard line internet service this all runs over.  

No big secret when someone wants to send me a text.  I just tell them they can't because that is the simple truth.  I have no idea what they might see if they tried.  I generally tell people the best way to reach me is via email.

It's very rare I get anything that requires electronic signatures.  Does this really happen a lot if you have a cell phone or texting capabilities?  I've had places use some business called Docusign (I think that was its name) to electronically sign things on occasion.  Most often it's places needing a W9 tax form so they can send me a 1099 at the end of the year.  I don't put my social security number on the internet as a matter of form, esp. not in emails and text messages would be the same.  Just seems like a bad idea.  In these cases I generally print out the form, sign it, and mail it to them, or give it to them directly when I'm at their place of business.

For most of my life there effectively were no cell phones, much less smart phones and we all seemed to get along just fine.  These days the call logs I can look at through Ooma show I get about 99 scam calls for every one that might be real.  I'm not exaggerating either!  That's why my phone's ringer is always off unless I'm actively expecting an imminent call.  I have been seriously tempted many times to just ditch phones all together.  I may do it yet, but there are still a couple people I only communicate with via the phone who I value.  It seems a phone number is also "required" for so many automated applications that not having one would be a major hassle.

David Huang wrote: It's very rare I get anything that requires electronic signatures.  Does this really happen a lot if you have a cell phone or texting capabilities?  

When businesses first started asking they would accept me typing in my name.  Nowadays they want a real signature.

This doesn't happen a lot.

In 2020, I figured out how to do it using a printer.  The printer no longer works even though I bought new ink.  I am not going to buy a new printer just so I can sign some company's dumb form.

If I can do my taxes (IRS) over the internet without a signature why can't these businesses use the same method?

David Huang wrote:... I generally print out the form, sign it, and mail it to them, or give it to them directly when I'm at their place of business.'..

Yes, that's the way to do it, when someone needs your signature on a form!
Because I don't own a printer (I don't want to) I know where to go to make use of a printer (and pay a little for the use of paper and toner).

I do have a smart phone (given to me by my family members). But most of the time I leave it at home (the cases of emergency for which I needed it are gone since my mother died).
If someone has something important to tell me they best use e-mail. I read the e-mail at least once a day. The phone I tend to forget (so if they text me on the phone, maybe I see the message a few days later).

But, as I told before: phones, computers, the internet ... that's all high tech! Even the printer is high tech (also if it is someone else's printer).

Inge Leonora-den Ouden wrote:
Because I don't own a printer (I don't want to) I know where to go to make use of a printer (and pay a little for the use of paper and toner).

I too went without a home printer for the longest time.  Owning and maintaining one for the little I printed just didn't make sense.  When I needed to print I'd go to my local library and happily pay the 15 cents a sheet to let them buy, store, and maintain what was a far nicer printer than I would ever get.

Then my art business shifted in such a way that I now do have to print a lot more than before so the cost benefit analysis changed such that I now have a both a paper printer and a shipping label printer.  

I prefer to make careful deliberate decisions what technology I bring into my home/life.

Jay Angler wrote:So scissors would be an axle, 2 levers and 2 wedges?
Are you allowed to have axles without wheels?

Fulcrum, not axle ;) and so scissors are leveraged wedges ;) A lever without a fulcrum is just a stick ;)

Context matters so much. Obviously we're here on the internet, so we're not true Luddites ;) When I lived on about a half acre in suburbia I mowed my lawn with a gas powered mower, then a reel type push mower, and then a scythe. I did my initial garden bed work double digging by hand.
When we moved on to twenty acres of undeveloped woodland, we got a chainsaw, because clearing the land for the house build with muscle power alone was not a reasonable choice. For the first five years I harvested trees and moved the timbers around using simple machines and muscle power for much of the work. I did buy an electric winch I could mount on my pickup for helping after the first couple of years, and a Portable Winch after that. Moving logs that weigh 400 to perhaps 1,000 pounds up a hill really isn't work for one 60+ year old man to do on muscle power alone.
I use scythes for most of my mowing work, but at the same time, I'm having a tractor delivered tomorrow, with a brush hog. Some of the larger scale work in mowing trails in the woods and clearing the power company's right of way will be done by the tractor and brush hog, because getting the job done in a day or two rather than having it run over the course of months has a real value. I've cut a fair portion of the right of way with my brush scythe, and while I could do the whole thing that way, with a couple of trees needing a saw or axe, life is genuinely too short for me to do it all that way.
I do quite a bit of woodworking, and I run the gamut from riving logs to get boards and shaping spindles with an axe and drawknife to milling logs with a chainsaw and Alaskan mill and I've got a partially assembled bandsaw mill sitting by my driveway right now. Context and scale. Spoon carving is 100% hand work, maybe the initial felling was with a chainsaw, maybe not. The timber frame for our house has been and will continue to be a blend. Power tools for some parts of the joinery and harvest. Manipulating the timbers with both simple machines  and powered devices like the tractor. Probably going to have to hire a crane for raising the frame.
All of my garden work is done entirely with hand tools, but my garden work is on a human scale, a few thousand square feet at most. And I probably will need to qualify that going forward, because one reason for having a tractor is to do some small scale pond excavating and use that material for filling raised beds. And again, I've begun that process entirely with hand tools, but the scale of pond I have in my design, and the raised beds that will surround it, are a bit much to expect of one old man on muscle power alone ;)

Peter Ellis wrote:

Moving logs that weigh 400 to perhaps 1,000 pounds up a hill really isn't work for one 60+ year old man to do on muscle power alone.

This is an example of why barn raising was a community affair at one time. Building a strong community - even just 4 or 5 families - that get together on each property in rotation to help with some big job, may hopefully be the way of the future. Rural Japan in I think the 17th century were organized by the government on a 5 farm basis and the group would re-thatch one building on each farm in a 5-year rotation. The thatch was grown on a specific "communal" plot that was large enough for re-thatching one building and some extra for interim repairs on other buildings.

There are a lot of low tech options if you've got even one other willing helper!