The Gift and Price of Knowledge

Happiness is discovering someone has put, onto a website, a number of books on industrial chemistry.

Unhappiness is realising that printing them out will take about 100 reams of paper to print them out on.

Fear is the knowledge that simply accumulating and possessing the knowledge could land one in prison for a long time... even if one knows a lot of the more interesting things from several years of formal training in chemistry... And that the act of downloading could be monitored.


There is the question of whether context would make a difference - again, the several years of formal training. Printing them out, of course, is a necessity - if and when the power goes out, how would you get to them if you don't? Most of them date from the early 20th Century, so are largely out of date for most uses... of course, that they are that old would make it easier to set-up an industrial chemistry lab at TEOTWAWKI.

The Things Man Was Not Meant To Know.... Now. In a climate of political fear and control.

If the authorities in question would like to give me a job (plenty of qualifications, much common sense, but little experience), I'd be very interested - and would have an outlet for my interest in a multitude of areas.

Perhaps I should start my own little engineering concern - that might allay any fears that I wanted to do anything, well, naughty with this knowledge.


Of course, that's really what I want to do - not anything naughty, but work with bootstrap technology, do some research and development into alternative technologies that could help rebuild after any... long-term problems...

That's the irony of it... the people who would want to imprison me (for wanting the knowledge to rebuild after a large-scale disaster) are the ones likely to cause (or at least, not help) some of the possible problems in the first place.

No matter which way I look at it, I can only think that I need to find a sponsor, patronage, or something - someone wealthy enough to have the resources I need to research and build, but without the knowledge needed to survive and rebuild. Or someone who can appreciate the knowledge needed.

A small ray of hope...

I have been approached by a new friend, someone who I'd met a while back, someone I'd only just really started talking to...

It turns out that not only do we have a few common, artistic interests, she is wanting to move to the country to hobby farm. Her experience has been in small, suburban herb and vegetable gardening - not in managing acreage... I have acreage, but barely enough time to do much. I tried vegetables two springs ago, rapidly finding that much work is needed for little return. After that, I moved to mostly trees - some work, but not as fiddly. I continue to grow some herbs, mostly in containers, but devote most space to a large variety of trees.

Of particular interest, we have started swapping notes on aquaponics - the marriage of aquaculture (growing fish) and hydroponics (growing plants). In an ideal situation, you feed the fish, the waste from the fish fertilises the plants. Bacteria help, of course... There are many things to consider - not the least that you need to be able to give the time to look after the system.

I had written it off as a bad idea a while back, but have reconsidered my position. Most food comes from "non-land animals" - ie ocean farmed fish, not efficient or self-sufficient. It is possible, however, to use plant materials, fly larvae, snails, and others.

An extra farm-hand would definitely help things - and spread the costs... A few others would be good, but... we take opportunities where we find them.

Things are definitely looking up.

Making best with the least...

Another day spent hunch over a work table, trying to work out what exactly has gone wrong, and attempting to repair, a piece of technology designed not to actually be repaired.

Very little today is made to be repaired. Replace, replace, replace - with a new model, barely different to the old model.

Some things are as simple as a little BFI (Brute Force and Ignorance), pushing a DVD drive reader head back into place, a few along the lines of simple replacement of questionable quality parts, and the occasional item where nothing is obvious.

Of course, people want the best quality in the repairs, but without wanting to pay for it. Every so often, I can happily tell them that the item can't be repaired, sometimes I have to provide an invoice that is quite in excess of what piddling amount they were wanting to get away with. It is nice to sometimes be able to actual get a forty year old bit of equipment back into full working order - and at a fraction of the cost that I had thought.

Times have changed... It wasn't that long ago, really, that electronics, and any manufactured item, were easily repaired. Of course, technology improves, less waste... yet quality goes down. As the complexity of integrated circuits increases, it becomes harder to modify, or use something close enough.

I have to hold my tongue, and not point out to most people that barely seventy years ago, none of the technology that they "depend" on existed... And likely, in seventy years time, people will have to relearn all those ancient lessons.

I spend my time looking at old technology, learning about making valves and other pieces of tech that could be recreated by a small workshop of people. At least if a few people gather all that knowledge, it won't have to be re-discovered.