Low Tech Magazine

Low Tech Magazine 

Exactly what it sounds like. A magazine dealing with all sorts of low tech solutions to the issues facing the world. Love the tag line: Doubts on progress and technology.

Don’t get me wrong - I love technology. But I often have to stop and question our headlong rush for the latest and greatest.

One of my neighbours is a very handy guy and makes some really nice stuff. He had to cut some wood on an angle recently and hauled out an electric miter saw, extension cords, roller stands. I’m happy for him that he can afford the stuff, but...for the amount of wood that needed to be cut, might a simple hand saw not have sufficed? In the time it took him to haul all that stuff out, set it all up, assault everyone’s ears with that noise, I could have had that wood cut with a simple hand saw.

I sew silly amounts of stuff by hand. Do I wish I had a machine to do it with? Sure. But I don’t, so I make do.

I get a big kick out of making simple alcohol or wood burning stoves out of little more than garbage. Sure, I could buy a fancy $150, multi-fuel stove that will brew me a cup of tea atop Nanda Devi. But my ghetto stove suits me just fine. 

I sometimes bring a box of stuff to or from my storage locker a few blocks away with little more than my Kifaru PackFrame. I imagine I get weird looks, but do I really need to fire up an F-250 pickup truck to move 4o lbs. 5 blocks?

I suppose anyone that uses a low tech solution, (and/or perhaps also a low cost solution, and/or a low noise solution, and/or a low energy consumption solution, and/or a low pollution solution) is probably looked on in North America at least as being a bit eccentric. Oh well. I predict low-tech solutions will become far more prevalent as the future unfolds.