 And we're back. Do you ever think about the future? I spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about what could be But I'm not talking about later this year or this political cycle this decade or even this generation I'm looking forward to a future. I'll never see Come with me as we hop in the low-tech time machine and jump forward to Cooksville in the year 2100 This is the low-tech podcast And we're back for a new season. Thanks for your patience while we're off. Hello and welcome I'm Scott Johnson from the Low-Technology Institute your host for podcast number 71 on November 17th 2023 coming to you from the low-tech recording booth here in Cooksville, Wisconsin. Thanks for joining us today We're introducing our new season of the podcast where we'll be spending a lot of time in the year 2100 and talking about what could be You can still follow us on Twitter X or whatever. It's called by the time this podcast comes out Our handle is at low underscore techno like us on Facebook find us on Instagram subscribe to us on YouTube Check out our website lowtech Institute org There you can find both of our podcasts as well as information about joining and supporting the Institute and its research Also, some podcast distributors put ads on podcasts unless you hear me doing the ad Someone else is probably making money on that advertising while all of our podcast videos and other information are given freely They do take resources to make and if you're in a position to help support our work and be part of this community Please consider becoming a monthly supporter for as little as three dollars a month for our patreon page You can find that at patreon.com slash low-tech Institute Another way to support us is to donate your used car Anyone in the US can contact us and your used car will be picked up sold and the proceeds come to us If you're interested in helping us out get in touch with us at low-tech Institute Dot excuse me with us at info at low-tech Institute org If you'd like to sponsor an episode directly get in touch with us through our website low-tech Institute org This season of the low-tech podcast is going to be about the future It's going to be about a future that we could create if we wanted to Those of us living today We'll have a lot of feelings about this future some good and some bad Some of us are excited about a change. Well, those of us who have a comfortable life now might not want things to change very much This is a challenging future that is full of hardship fulfillment misery satisfaction and all these contradictions that make up life The low-tech podcast spends a lot of time in the future You can check out episode 61 about future fitting and otherwise suburban neighborhood to survive well into the future or Episode 63 where we talk about composting and what systems will be most resilient long into the future We're not going to be talking about today's problems Even though some of these problems will persist well into the future We're not going to go into climate change fossil fuels industrial agriculture Racial tensions inequality hunger or any of the other challenges that seems so overwhelming today We're so involved in these crises that we can hardly consider ones that we know are coming tomorrow Let alone problems that we can't foresee It's also really difficult for us to have an Objective point of view about our lives today because we're so deeply involved and have personal stakes in the outcome By looking far into the future into the year 2100 when most of us will no longer be alive We might be able to be more objective Maybe we can put politics aside for the moment and maybe just maybe after we've gone into the future to talk About what we could be we can turn around and look at today with clearer eyes We're also not going to be talking about national or global solutions This is not a green new deal and we won't be going into cap and trade emission schemes This isn't about national policies or international mandates. I'm a citizen of two countries I've lived in Mexico Canada and Europe for long periods of time But I grew up and live most of my life in the United States and I'm starting now To understand what makes the US so different from these other countries Those of us with ancestors outside the United States Who came here of our own free will are the descendants of risk-takers think about this generations ago you and your mileage may vary on How many generations that is many of our ancestors decided to get on a boat and go essentially to another planet These people knew that they were not going to be going home to visit their friends family and home countries probably for the rest of their lives It was a one-way ticket Obviously, there are many people in the United States today who are already here and Also who were brought against their will but the overarching narrative that drives much of our national policy and ethos is one of Individualistic risk-taking and this risk-taking has benefits and drawbacks On the one hand most Americans do not want to accept government mandates But they are willing to radically change their lives if it seems to be in their individual best interest Having lived in other countries I can tell you that in many places the government is not seen as an enemy or an entity that is out to get them The government and policies are readily accepted But on the other hand people across the world are generally risk-a-verse and are not willing to change their lives in drastic ways If they can help it Right now it seems like the status quo is the pinnacle of industrial life And so it isn't in anyone's interest to change it those who are generally content with today's life are going to be the most Difficult to convince that we need to change by focusing on things that can change for individuals Households and small communities we can make the argument that these are in everyone's best interest by demonstrating their efficacy on the local scale We can show them that another way of life might even be better than what we have today We can spend less use less energy depend on our local resources and live slower, but fuller lives Okay, let's take a step back Imagine that you're an astronaut floating above the earth on the International Space Station looking out of a window back at earth People who have been able to get this perspective report back that they feel like the problems and divisions on our planet are really Inconsequential When you when you take this all in it's a phenomenon known as the overview effect And you don't have to go to space to experience this if you've ever traveled and have been fully immersed in a culture That was new to you especially when you don't speak the language You can probably think of a time or an event that seemed very exciting to locals, but not to you The opposite is culture shock Which is where something that's considered mundane in your new location brings on really strong emotions for you My background is in Archaeology and anthropology and this overview effect feeling is something most of us have experienced when we have lived outside of a culture That wasn't familiar to us at first cultural anthropologists Embed themselves to learn what it is like to live in another culture. You might have some romantic image of a White person wearing linen living with an uncontacted tribe in the Amazon But that's not at all what an anthropology is today now. We study communities in the industrialized world Sometimes even in our own backyards embedding with criminal organizations corporations political movements neighborhood groups and many others To study a culture Anthropologists often live as members of that community for years And so it's really easily to become emotionally involved with people and the situation Death disasters illness births marriages and even day-to-day activities are happening to real people when we've gotten to know really well When I taught cultural anthropology at universities, I wouldn't make the joke that anthropology is just people watching with fancy vocabulary Now I spent my life studying people and how they lived over hundreds of thousands of years of human history And I find civilizations or what used to be called civilizations the most intriguing because for I don't know 97% I'm making that up of modern human history We have lived in small hunter-gatherer bands only in the last 10,000 years Have we started to live in communities that were permanently located in larger than a few hundred people? What this means is our brains didn't evolve to deal with so many neighbors and the tension that many of us feel today with Instinting global communications in our pockets is a revolution that our ancestors and their cultural systems and even their brains Didn't have to deal with as an archaeologist. I studied dead people and their cultures I did this in England the US Guatemala and Mexico where people lived their lives Thousands of years ago and only left partial clues as to what those lives entailed and even at a distance of thousands of years It was hard not to become personally invested as I excavated a family compound in Yucatan or a potential baby's grave in England the Overview effect is the default perspective for most archaeologists And it helps us stay a little bit distracted or detached from today's events For example, I was talking with a conservative friend the other day and he assumed that I was a liberal Democrat I responded that I consider the Republicans and Democrats to be largely the same They argue about whether or not we should use gas or electric cars or as I debate if we should be using cars at all Years ago, I wrote a book about the collapse of ancient large-scale societies, which we used to call civilizations It was easy to keep an overview effect when looking at these societies in the past but one of the Problems with this overview effect is that it makes us paint with a broad brushstrokes and we forget the nuance of the individual There's a famous quote that one death is a tragedy But a million is a statistic and both viewpoints do look at the truth But it's hard to keep them both in focus at the same time So while we try and focus on human scale solutions in this new season We should also have a thought for how the wide-scale adoption of these smaller changes would affect our local communities and our global society going forward Unfortunately, it's it's it's just not that easy when we look at history We often have difficulty divorcing the personalities who came up with an idea from the idea objectively So by jumping far into the future We could be hopefully more objective if for example we Programmed an artificial intelligence program to analyze a certain problem the information that it analyzes will skew and bias It's answered because the human created information was also skewed and biased So a data analysis quote you'll often hear is the garbage in garbage out So no matter how good the analysis if faulty information is fed into the system the results will be worthless So as long as we're aware of the tendency to view the past and present and future through our culture Biased spectacles we can try to count for it and we can try to maintain the overview effect Helped by jumping forward in time to make decisions that might be uncomfortable for us today Throughout the season we'll be covering every aspect of life in 2100 Luckily because I've studied people and cultures throughout time I feel a little bit qualified to be your guide also because I've worked as a copy editor I can stick to the ruthless editors advice for authors to quote-unquote kill their darlings by which they mean to cut out Any unnecessary text no matter how dear to their hearts I have no compunctions about throttling the darlings of life in 2020 for a sustainable future in 2100 Or to torture another metaphor I'm willing to throw out the bathwater the basin and burn down the house if it makes a survivable future for the baby And although my background in academia will help as I work through what the future will look like It also ties my hands a little because I often slip into Academies and use concepts that are not always immediately understood and so well we'll be covering complex technical and societal Concepts I'll try and stick to an informal discussion tone. Really. I do this when I'm writing I try and think about whatever idea I'm trying to get across and how I would explain to my brother and sister in an email to keep it thorough But not like I'm talking down to anyone so for the podcast I try and think of having a conversation with a friend over a pot of tea and trying to convince them about one of my crazy ideas and Even though I'm writing about a speculative future I'm going to try and talk as if we're in the present tense as if we really got in a time machine and traveled forward to the year 2100 you know when I used to teach Archeology classes at the beginning as a bit of a joke. I assume I would always tell them if you later in your life invent a time machine And then you come back and pick me up and take me to a time of my choosing in the past I'll give you an automatic a in the class and nobody ever came to pick me up So I'm assuming that time machines don't actually exist But here's the open invitation to the podcast listening audience if you later in life invent a time machine come pick me up Take me somewhere and and we'll talk about on the podcast But for now we're getting into a virtual time machine to go to the year 2100 And there are two reasons for this first it would be really annoying for me to say sentences like cooks Villians have built a will have built a methane digester It's much better to say that the villagers built a methane digester last year Even though I really like that the the tense in the first case is called the future perfect, which is really a Great tense to be speaking in for what we're talking about But it would be a present disaster to talk like that for an entire podcast season And the other reason for sticking to the present tense is to let you feel a little more immersed in this world that I'm going to be Creating and talking about and visiting for this season More important than the tense and the tone are the facts and we can't rely on Technological breakthroughs to save us if we are able to perfect energy efficient carbon capture and sequestration technology It would be a game changer in terms of climate change Certainly if everyone woke up tomorrow and suddenly had access to clean transportation We would emit about a quarter less to carbon dioxide than yesterday nuclear fusion holds the promise of limitless energy with less danger than its infamous sibling fission, but Perhaps aliens will arrive and provide us with new solutions to climate change and our energy appetite outpacing our supply But until one or all of these things happen We can't depend on these potential solutions because people can only eat actual food Where extant or existing clothing and stay warm with palpable heat? Let me say that again. We can't depend on unproven hopeful solutions Every single thing that I'm going to be talking about in this season of the podcast already exists in some form And now while I may increase their efficiency for the version that I described in the year 2100 It's not unreasonable to think that 75 years of science and engineering will have brought the technology From what it is today into a future state that I describe I'm not overshooting anything here the kernel of each and every solution that I describe already exists today All right, so let's have a little bit of a roadmap for this season of the podcast First we're going to situate Cooke'sville in time and space and we'll talk about the history and present state of this Village as well as what happens between now and the year 2100 both here and at home and throughout the world We're going to jump right into probably the most important consideration of our future and that is energy We'll talk about the rise and fall of the electrification of our lives as well as different fuel sources into the future We'll go into hydrogen compressed air methane solutions for heating and cooling our houses and much much more We'll then move on to food and how that's become incredibly localized. We'll talk about shelter where we both retrofit And build new construction and then we'll talk about things clothing electronics housewares and so much more Where are they going to come from when we can't ship them from far away? And this leads us to the next section, which is where we'll focus on Transportation and that will include a lot of light rail and bicycles But go really deep into why everyone getting an electric car is not the long-term solution some of our transportation will be Reduced because of our maintained communication networks, which is the next segment followed by a discussion of quote-unquote Waste management Everybody's favorite topic, right? We'll wrap up talking about how society will have changed over time as we adopt to this new way of life and That should bring us well into the spring if not farther So buckle in set your flux capacitors to the year 2100 in Cookesville, Wisconsin and let's go for a tour That's it for this week The low-tech podcast is put out by the Low Technology Institute the show is hosted and produced by me Scott Johnson And we should say a special thank you and farewell to Hina Suzuki who produced and edited our podcast for the last Year and season good luck wrapping up your studies at UW and a future career in media or wherever that takes you this episode Was recorded in the low-tech recording booth in Cookesville, Wisconsin subscribe to the podcast on itunes Spotify Google Play YouTube and elsewhere We hope you enjoyed this free podcast if you'd like to join the community and help support the work We do please consider going to patreon.com slash low tech Institute and signing up Thank you to our forester and land steward level Supporters Marilyn Skirpon and the Hamvises for their support the Low Technology Institute is a 501c3 research organization Supported by members grants and underwriting you can find out more information about the Low Technology Institute membership and underwriting at lowtech Institute org find us on social media you can reach me directly. I'm Scott at lowtech Institute org Our intro music today was drama off the album power pop from Polissina That song is in the public domain and this podcast is under the creative comments attribution share like license And you're free to use and share it as long as you give us credit. Thanks. Take care stick around