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Modern Tech inside an Amish Horse-Drawn Buggy
- JoeAltmaier 10y agoIts all about self-sufficiency.
- baobrain 10y agoI'm somewhat confused. As the article says, buggy components are often manufactured off-site (e.g. fiberclass body), how does this make them self-sufficient?
- JoeAltmaier 10y agoHm I guess if they can repair the body. Which is pretty easy. The other half of their philosophy is avoiding pride. So cool, you're self-sufficient. But not perfectly so, or that would be prideful. There's an old Amish joke - father is driving the family home from Meeting in the buggy. He turns to Momma and says "I guess we were the plainest ones there!"
- whatusername 10y agoCan you explain the joke? I'm not sure I understand the humour.
- Kliment 10y agoI am not the original poster but I understand it to be about bragging (and thus showing pride) about being plain (not showing pride). As in, "well, we sure did show them how much humbler we are than all of them".
- ars 10y agoIt's self sufficiency after purchase not before. They don't mind buying things they can't make, as long as they can repair or do without them afterward. They won't buy things that need constant connection to the outside - like grid electricity. They will buy a generator as long as they can take it completely apart and put it back together. But if they can't do that they won't. LED's seem unexpected to me, but I suspect they are OK with them because the lights are not for them they are for the outside world. As far as they are concerned they don't need them (so can do without). Note: Things (such as buying a generator) vary by community.
- rconti 10y agoIs the vastly lower energy consumption of LEDs perhaps a virtue that makes them preferable to incandescents, even though they are far more complicated to manufacture?
- ars 10y agoThey can't manufacture either of them, so complexity of manufacture doesn't enter into it. So I assume they like LED's for the same reason you do, less battery. If they did make incandescents (I suppose if they tried they could), then the comparison would be harder for them, and I would expect some communities to go one way, some the other.
- SamReidHughes 10y agoAlso, in homes, the main alternatives involve fire.
- ams6110 10y agoI would imagine they could manufacture incandescents if they so chose. Glassblowing seems like something they'd be OK with. And otherwise it's just a bit of wire and a vacuum.
- ars 10y agoThat wire is pretty special though, it's a coil of coil, with extremely tight tolerance. i.e. if you look at it it looks like a coil, but actually the wire that makes up that first coil is itself an even smaller coil. You have to wind it such that no part of the wire touches (or it will burn out at that spot). It's titanium which is not an easy material to make wire out of without special industrial equipment. And not pure titanium either, but has special additives. You have to make it without any variation in thickness! Even a 1% variation will cause it to rapidly overheat and burn out. It's also not a vacuum in there, but a mixture of nitrogen and argon, which needs special equipment to gather. In short they could make a bulb like what Edison made, but without an industrial base not anything like a modern bulb. And despite all that, those bulbs sell for pennies.......
- altendo 10y ago>Despite what you may have heard, the Amish aren’t against technology. Communities adopt new gadgets such as fax machines and business-use cellphones all the time—as long as the local church approves each one ahead of time, determining that it won’t drastically change their way of life. This alone is the most interesting point of the article. People not belonging to the community, like myself, have a fixed preconceived notion of what it's like to be Amish. I still don't know much about Amish life and culture, but it's fascinating to see where my assumptions are wrong (and what else I may be wrong about!)
- Terribledactyl 10y agoI find it's also easy to fall into the trap of attributing more cohesion than there is and simplifying all of the groups into some sort of average. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amish#Use_of_technology_by_different_Amish_affiliations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amish#Use_of_technology_by_dif...
- avar 10y agoThere's some really interesting inconsistencies in that table. E.g. some think tractors for fieldwork aren't OK but lawnmowers are, for others somehow chainsaws are bad but washing machines are fine etc. Looking these over there doesn't seem to be any clear pattern to me. The grandparent mentioned them not wanting things that will "drastically change their way of life", surely having a washing machine is a bigger change to your life than having a chainsaw, even if you're a farmer.
- vic-traill 10y ago>surely having a washing machine is a bigger change to your life than having a chainsaw The relative effect of these devices varies by location. This assessment might be true in Southern CA, but if you're heating your domicile using wood in Northern Ontario that chainsaw is looking pretty good!
- jfoutz 10y agoa washing machine, with little parts that can be replaced with wood or metal, seems like the kind of thing that can be kept in good working order for a long time. I'd be leery of a chainsaw with handmade parts. I also kind of wonder about lubricants and fuel in a chainsaw, how hard is it to safely duplicate those oils?
- davidgerard 10y agoOriginal link: http://www.popularmechanics.com/cars/technology/a24666/how-the-amish-build-a-buggy/ http://www.popularmechanics.com/cars/technology/a24666/how-t...
- dripton 10y ago>There was actually an alternator system attempted in the last five years,” he says. “It worked about 60 percent, but it never took off. Generator hubs for bicycles are mature technology at this point. Including capacitors in the taillights so they stay on when the bike is stopped. Buggies could easily adopt them, but I guess it's not worth the bother if batteries mostly work.
- sbierwagen 10y agoI've got a dual dynamo/drum-brake hub, the Sturmey Archer X-FDD. It works quite well-- but only at normal biking speeds. Below 10mph it's flickery and annoying. If a horse isn't in a hurry, it usually travels at a walk, which is something like 5mph. So bicycle dynamos won't work well for a buggy.
- maxerickson 10y agoIt could be mounted with a belt (at a reduction). The horse probably won't be as bothered by the increased load as a human.
- gvb 10y agoGenerators or alternators driven off the wheels are not free - the horse is now powering your lights as well as your wagon. The relatively high efficiency of LED lights helps a lot, but your horse still with thank you for using batteries. The article discusses the higher efficiency of steel tires compared to rubber tires and the emphasis on light weight. Tens of Watts of generator load on the horse is probably more than the difference in steel vs. rubber tires.
- wiredfool 10y agoIf a guy that rides 1200km on a bike in 50 hours prefers a generator vs batteries based on drag vs weight I'd say that the generator + lights is pretty much solved technology.
- dripton 10y agoThey're not tens of watts. More like 3W. See http://www.nabendynamo.de/produkte/son_28_en.html http://www.nabendynamo.de/produkte/son_28_en.html If it's not enough to bother a human cyclist, it's not enough to bother a horse.
- oh_sigh 10y agoHow do Amish people generally make money? I know there are markets that sell Amish goods to non-Amish, but there must be more to their income than that.
- snarf21 10y agoI live in Lancaster PA and most Amish can't afford the farm land here anymore (its become housing and malls) and have moved west. Lots of Amish now work in the trades (construction/electrical/roofing/etc.) Someone picks them up and takes them to their job sites. Their general low standard of living (no car payments or electronics budgets) allow for that to be a very solid income for most.
- tbihl 10y agoMinor point, but you meant 'cost of living', I believe.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- astrodust 10y agoIt's inter-related. If you don't have a lot of needs you don't have a lot of expenses. If you're prepared to live in a cardboard box you can save a fortune on rent. It's also a deliberately low standard of living.
- kibwen 10y agoBy "moved west" I presume you just mean farther west into the state, rather than the west coast? I'm from near Mercer, PA and I haven't noticed any decline in the number of buggies on the roads near there.
- snarf21 10y agoA lot have moved west of the mountains but they have also pushed into Ohio, Indiana and Iowa. There are still plenty around but the model of buying a farm for each new couple to run and start their own family isn't tenable with the real estate prices around here and the declining number of farms period. It is quite a shame as Lancaster County is some of the world's best farmland/top soil and we've paved it all. :(
- teilo 10y agoWhen I worked for a Wal-Mart in Indiana in the 90s, the Amish would come into the electronics department and buy country music cassettes and battery-powered players. And also, I kid you not, Gameboys.
- dzdt 10y agoThe Amish attitude towards technology is a pretty good model of what an eventual Mars colony will need. When (or if) people finally travel to Mars to stay, the biggest risk to the colony will be being dependent on imports from Earth. It will always be expensive to send ships from Earth to Mars, so it is folly to assume that resupply missions will continue indefinitely. So a colony which hopes to be viable must be vigilant not to be too dependent on outside goods. This is the same as the Amish attitude. Every item from outside is regarded as suspicious; it MUST be rejected if it produces a dependency on the outside. Best if it can be made inside the community; perhaps acceptable if it can be repaired and used indefinitely even if it only comes from outside. So a Mars colony will evaluate imports. Anything that can be made locally on Mars is best; things which can be repaired and reused indefinitely are okay; things which increase the dependency on the outside world will be shunned.
- dreamcompiler 10y agoThere's no wood on Mars. A great deal of our infrastructure (not just Amish infrastructure) is wood-based, and the first Martians will have to find a substitute for it. The typical substitute for wood is plastic, but that comes from petroleum, and there's none of that on Mars either. I suppose one of the first things we'll have to build on Mars is greenhouses -- not just for food, but for plant-based plastic to build things with.
- NortySpock 10y agoBamboo is a commonly proposed Mars substitute. Grows like a weed.
- khuey 10y agoOr we'll just make a lot more things out of metal.
- erik 10y agoI wonder how useful martian soil is for making glass or ceramics.
- redsummer 10y agoA lot of people think the Amish are against technology. In fact, they carefully consider the technology's effect on themselves and their community. Will it really help, or is it just a new thing which will cause unintended consequences? For instance, some Amish groups accepted cars, and their community disappeared - when anyone can drive anywhere the community collapsed. Now there are no Amish who allow cars. The same thing would happen with the internet. Tech people like ourselves automatically assume that technology is some advance, or improvement. Our peers tell us this, our incomes depend on us believing this. In fact, technology does not improve the human condition in most cases. It erodes it. We would be better making careful decisions like the Amish, but our civilisation is locked onto this myth of 'progress'. Technology should be for us, not the other way around. Unlike the Amish, we put the cart before the horse.
- Clubber 10y ago>In fact, technology does not improve the human condition in most cases. It erodes it. I agree with what you said but think this is a little strong of a statement. I guess it depends on what you mean by technology. I'd rather live today than in the 1900s because of medical technology alone. It's like anything. Technology just is. It's what people with free will do with it that can be harmful or helpful. With that said, I agree we should be more diligent to at least be aware of how technology is affecting us personally, then act accordingly.
- redsummer 10y agoYou might think you would prefer to live now rather than 1900, but I would suspect that the word "live" had greater meaning then. Here is Ben Franklin on the appeal of the traditional Native American life: "When an Indian Child has been brought up among us, taught our language and habituated to our Customs, yet if he goes to see his relations and make one Indian Ramble with them, there is no perswading him ever to return, and that this is not natural [to them] merely as Indians, but as men, is plain from this, that when white persons of either sex have been taken prisoners young by the Indians, and lived a while among them, tho' ransomed by their Friends, and treated with all imaginable tenderness to prevail with them to stay among the English, yet in a Short time they become disgusted with our manner of life, and the care and pains that are necessary to support it, and take the first good Opportunity of escaping again into the Woods, from whence there is no reclaiming them"
- forkandwait 10y agoWhenever a discussion of Amish comes up, I have to link to my favorite hard core Anabaptist sect, the Hutterites. Unlike th Amish, the Hutterites love technology. They choose what technology to use as part of a very strict church system, like the Amish, but are very much into diesel engines and the internet and the like (note the link below). See [1] and [2] below. They also live communally in farming colonies of about 80 people (half Dunbar's number) in very remote parts of Western Canada and the Northwestern US. Historically, the Hutterites have pissed off the local non-Hutterite farmers because the colonies are successful and can buy up local land from the non-communal/ religious/ pacifist local farmers; they were run out of South Dakota for their success combined with their pacifism in the early 20th Century. They are pacifist, just like all Anabaptists (Mennonite, Amish, etc). Unlike English variants of Anabaptism (Quakers, etc), Hutterites and other German derived sects drink quite a bit of alcohol, I think. I think they have a great a-capella singing ritual tradition. I bet their food is great, too. I heard they like hockey. The ~1900 Hutterites are also famous among population theorist/ demographers because their historical data provided the baseline of the highest possible, yet realistic, human fertility society. They married early (probably with quasi-arranged marriages), had lots of babies (much cheaper to raise in a communal setting), were healthy with relatively low mortality, and kept great records (German heritage...). They are very much a going concern today, continuing to found new colonies even a few years ago, one in Oregon 14 years ago [3] below. I have always wanted to visit a colony, but I live in the urban Puget Sound and the closest colony is about 3.5 hour drive away. I have read that they are quite welcoming, as long as you are quite respectful in return (a fair trade, to my mind). [1] http://www.hutterites.org/ http://www.hutterites.org/ [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hutterite https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hutterite [3] http://community.seattletimes.nwsource.com/archive/?date=20030308&slug=hutterites08 http://community.seattletimes.nwsource.com/archive/?date=200...
- vogt 10y agoVery interesting. I live in Pullman, WA. They have a colony in Spokane. I'm curious now.
- seanmcdirmid 10y agoI knew rural BC was an outpost for Mormon offshoots that still polygamy, but this is actually much cooler. It's weird I've never run into any, I spend a lot of time in eastern washington.
- cnnsucks 10y agoMy state has cut rumble strips down the middle of many roads. The Amish are up early and travelling around on Sundays in buggies on the shoulders. It use to be easy to give them room; no traffic that early so you swing out across the line and keep away from the horse. Now if you do that you hit the rumble strip and the horse will panic; rear up and try to see what terrible thing is coming up from behind.
- hrayr 10y agoAll this tech, and no pictures of them anywhere in the article.
- stan_rogers 10y agoGraven images, you mean?
- seanmcdirmid 10y agoBuggies are the original self driving vehicles. Many stories about drunk guys getting into their buggies alone, falling asleep, and waking up at home!
- kahrkunne 10y agoThe Amish are a very interesting people, I respect them very much. I wouldn't want to live that way, but you have to have some admiration for people who can hold on to their principles like that in the face of modern conveniences.