Open Ideas

Human powered electricity generation is not the newest of ideas. As relates Webber Energy Blog here, it has already been implemented in fitness centers in California and Hon Kong. A similar idea has been set up by  a British night club owner with a dancefloor producing electricity. But why not expand this idea to smaller and even more everyday actions and use it to power devices at the same scale. I’m thinking of these automatic watches, for instance, that mechanically store hand and wrist movement to run: they, too, already exist. Now what if, for example, you implemented this kind of pendulum energy collectors into trousers and jackets. The collected electric energy could be stored in sewn-in batteries and/or be directly used to recharge all those devices we also love to carry around: mobile phones, pods, CD-players, GPS, playstations etc. Considering all the energy wasted by traditional wall-plugged current converters, this could mean quite a step for planet care. A step, too, perhaps, for public health: If you have to move around a little more to get that pod running, you might have just the bit of necessary motivation to do so…

Now, one could consider another option: not an energy producing but an energy saving suit. Today’s technology allows for very optimal thermal isolation. Of course, hi-end material is highly expensive but imagine all the savings one could make if, instead of heating a house interior to 20°C, one would only keep it at 5°C and compensate by an skin-adhesive thermosuit, even at home and in the office. Imagine highway patrol wearing these suits instead of keeping the motor running to keep warm (yes they really do this in the US, I’ve seen on a motorway near Boston).

And now, think one step further and combine both ideas: a discrete skin-adhesive energy suit collecting thermoregulating the body while collecting heat and movement energy wherever possible. Take a walk and your laptop will keep running in the middle of nowhere.

Any implementation suggestions or profound reasons why all this is really just unreasonable gibberish and cheap science-fiction? Feel free to write so.

A couple of days ago, we’ve climbed on top of the Duomo of Milano. One of the most amazing features of Gothic structures like this are really is the way it treats rain water flow.The water, which falls on the vast surface of the roof, is first led to the sides, and then collected in such a way as to flow along the top of the magnificently decorated arc-boutants (flying buttresses), down to the pinnacles. It then flows though each pinnacle and is spat out, on the other side, by a gargoyle, upon the top of a smaller side-roof, and so on, by the mouths of other gargoyles down to the Piazza del Duomo.

Now this is a way to build meaning out of an everyday phenomena: here, rain water is made to participate to the dynamic structure of the gargoyles, which symbolically protect the church (i.e. the christian community) by spitting out God’s wrath on everything evil (doing so, they also accomplish something that the Greeks have called “catharsis“). At the same time, they participate to the simple sheltering function of the cathedral, by limiting the abrasive effect of rain water on its mineral structure.

And there is another thing: the roof of this cathedral is accessible and it obviously has been since it was build. It is difficult to prove this assertion from medieval written sources but the very comfortable stone stairway leading way up to there speaks for itself. Walking on the roof, you can see these gargoyles, and many other things that inspire a bodily sense of meaning, like the statues of many catholic saints, which, from the Piazza del Duomo, seem floating in the sky, but which, from the roof, can be seen as floating over the city of Milan, keeping a caring eye on its inhabitants. Looking at them from way up there, you experience a vertigo whih could not be transmitted by written text.

The Duomo, to anyone who has access to its roof, thus works pretty much like a Zen garden: it is a factory of meaning whose every structural detail allows you to make a bodily experience of a transcendental reality. And by letting you experience this, helps you to produce meaning which you can inject into society by your spoken word. And this is precisely how we can imagine medieval priests used structures like these.

But the Duomo (and from here comes its factory status) does not have to be reserved to priests. It is so huge that hundreds of people can climb on the top of it or stroll inside. And while the interior allows for rituals and introspection, its roof allows for reflection on society and its relation with a transcendental meaning (notwithstanding the this-worldedness or other-worldedness of this transcendentality).

Having seen this, I came to ask myself this question: is it still possible, today, to build such a factory of meaning? The Sagrada Familia in Barcelona proves that it is, of course, but religion should not have a monopole on meaning? Isn’t it also possible to build permanent secular structures of this kind? Buildings that engage into reflection and that are tools for any-one’s construction of a profound philosophical reflection on our everyday world?

I certainly believe our society able of setting up such things. We don’t even need physical space to do so: there is plenty of accessible cyberspace for such things. Plans for such structures aren’t missing either: if you read “La biblioteca de Babel“, in Borgès’ Ficciones, you can a very functional description of a building which very accurately embodies very important aspects of contemporary thought.

And what about you building such a factory of meaning, be it in the world of stone or cyberspace?

Lately, I noticed again a couple of car wrecks being torn apart to iron plates on the top of some wagon. A week after that, a mechanic changed the car battery of our old VW Golf. Seeing him making that, I thought:

“Hell, this old thing is still running. The only thing it was missing is a new battery. Sure, it consumes way too much gas, in comparison with more recent machines, but why would we buy a new one?”

Some car makers really try to sell you new models with pretense of environmental concern, but a new bodywork (the french say “carrosserie”), with seats, tires, plastic interior, gears, and who knows what else… has to be made: and the fabrication of those things actually costs gas energy, too.

The thing someone should really come up with is a plug-in motor:

The plugin motor is sold in separate parts, which can be connected to each other in such a way as to be able to plug the motor into any bodywork. When new technologies arise, you should not have to buy a new car, but simply replace your motor, or parts of it, as long as the bodywork is good.

All its parts should be worldwide ISO certified, so they can connect to each other in any combination. A car upgrade could then be comparable to what is done with software: you don’t throw your machine away, but only upgrade the OS, or little parts of it.

Just imagine your beautiful Chevy or vintage Trabant with the latest Japanese “Hybrid Inside”. Or an elctromotor, or whatever this civilization will have to come up with in the next thirty years.

Last but not least, the use of plug-in motors  provide local jobs to many people. Many mechanics would be needed to produce custom motors and motor upgrades on a regular basis. Garage work would become more creative. And people would be able to pay these new generation mechanics by all the money not spent on buying whole new cars. As opposed to car production, plugin motor upgrading has to be done locally and therefore cannot be delocalized: the jobs it provides are thus sustainable.

Is this feasible? Please post any drawings, links to similar projects or objections.

Image: from Flickr by: Paleontour, may 2008, Creative Commons BY

OK, today, I’ve had enough of all of these ideas that come up to me a couple of times a day and that I only consider for a while before concluding I’ll never have time to realize them. They’re concepts, inventions, impossible machines, places where one hasn’t perhaps yet thought of going.

Most inconveniently, time is just another resource and besides my writing, my songwriting, my PhD and my job at the Institute of Technology, there is no room for these things, unless I were able to find satisfaction in doing all the things I do only half-way.

The thing is: I don’t like the idea of the return of these ideas into oblivion. Most of them might not be that good or that new, I’m sure, but I’m pretty certain someone might do something really great with some of them. So here they are. Perhaps you’ll stumble across this page and perhaps you’ll be the one making that step. Feel free to use them as you like. If you find them really bad, really good, or just feel you’de like to discuss somthing about them, go ahead. This blog is open.