Battery used Battery charging

Why the Office Needs a Typewriter Revolution

Could we rethink and redesign office equipment, combining the best of mechanical and digital devices?

Pigeon Towers: A Low-tech Alternative to Synthetic Fertilizers

Pigeon towers helped Persian farmers cultivate all kinds of crops on previously arid, thin-soil land.

How to Get Your Apartment Off the Grid

Solar panels on window sills and balconies can supply more power than you would think.

Slow Electricity: The Return of DC Power?

Directly coupling DC power sources with DC loads can result in a significantly cheaper and more sustainable solar system.

Power Water Networks

Hydraulic power transmission is very efficient compared to electricity when it is used to operate powerful but infrequently used machines.

Fruit Walls: Urban Farming in the 1600s

From the sixteenth to the twentieth century, urban farmers grew Mediterranean fruits and vegetables as far north as England and the Netherlands, using only renewable energy.

Reinventing the Greenhouse

Contrary to its fully glazed counterpart, a passive solar greenhouse is designed to retain as much warmth as possible.

How to Build a Low-tech Internet

If we want the internet to keep working in circumstances where access to energy is more limited, we can learn important lessons from alternative network technologies.

The 4G Mobile Internet That's Already There

These days, so many households have a WiFi-router installed that sharing the signal of these devices could provide free mobile internet access across densely populated cities.

Why We Need a Speed Limit for the Internet

The energy use of the internet can only stop growing when energy sources run out, unless we impose self-chosen limits.

Garum: Fermented Fish Sauce for the Ancient Roman Masses

Fish fermentation allowed the ancient Romans to store their fish surplus for long periods, in a time when there were no freezers and fishing was bound to fish migratory patterns.

Water Johads: A Low-Tech Alternative to Mega-Dams in India

Before the British arrived, people on the subcontinent used traditional low-cost, low-tech engineering to collect rainwater for thousands of years.