Building a Telegraph Using Only Stone Age Materials 238
MMBK writes "It's the ultimate salvagepunk experiment, building a telegraph out of things found in the woods. From the article: 'During the summer of 2009, artist Jamie O’Shea of the organization Substitute Materials set out to test whether or not electronic communication could have been built at any time in history with the proper knowledge, and with only tools and materials found in the wilderness of New Jersey.'"
Can't watch video (Score:5, Insightful)
I really hate being referred to a video in a story. I am never interested in enough to sit through it. So how did they find copper? And a power source?
Re:Disappointing Video (Score:2, Insightful)
"If civilization collapsed and needed to be rebuilt with only stored knowledge and what can be found outside", what we'd find outside would be a whole shit-ton of wrecked infrastructure waiting to be salvaged. Anyone considering primitive tech without aluminum-age wreckage is already so far removed from any practical hypotheticals, they may as well be on mythbusters (no offense, Mr. President).
So for me, that they started from stone-age vs. bronze or better tech is not particularly disappointing, just mildly amusing.
Re:Time machine (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, probably his time machine has the same restrictions as the time machine I've once built: You can only go into the future, and that only at a speed of one second per second.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd go wireless (Score:5, Insightful)
Spinning mirrors possibly. Maybe a strobe of some sort.
True it is line of sight, but probably good enough.
One thing I would not do is smelt miles of copper wire.
If civilization *really* collapses... (Score:5, Insightful)
Several tens if not hundreds of thousands of people graduate from college with engineering degrees every year in the US alone. This has been going on for many decades, which means that in the US alone, there are literally millions if not tens of millions of scientists and engineers, many with decades of experience in their professional lives as well as bits and pieces of technical know-how picked up from hobbies and idle curiosity. These people don't all live within one lethal radius. They're spread out all over a big-ass country. Their tools (lathes, mills, computers, smelters, furnaces, etc) are also spread out over a big-ass country. And that's just "post-industrial" America I'm talking about. People with technical know-how and technology and machinery are spread out all over the planet.
Any end to civilization that takes out *all* technological capability would have to be a planet-wide event that would necessarily take out the geeks as well. Otherwise, if a giant meteor takes out North America, European, Chinese, Indian, and Brazilian engineers would just move in and do the rebuilding with Brazilian or Indian or Chinese or European-made equipment.
Missing a Component (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Disappointing Video (Score:5, Insightful)
"If civilization collapsed..."
Interesting as a premise as that is, it isn't the concept behind what he was doing. This wasn't a DIY hard hack demonstration in the sense that those usually show up on /. This was a conceptual activity, intended to explore an idea. Think "art" not "science". His idea was that this example of technology could be built from nature without any preceding technology at hand, just the knowledge of how to do it. He wanted to to stand on the shoulders of the giants who'd come before him, but not take along any of their tools.
The fact that ultimately he did use one of those tools (a lighter) is why (IMHO) this exercise failed. I understand his reasoning: He could have started the fire without the lighter, and on previous occasions he had started fires without it. But once he made that argument, he could say that he could have have built a battery, and on another occasion he did, so he used a prefab one... and you might at well just leave it as a thought experiment. The performance itself was incomplete, and all that was left was a proof of concept rather than the execution of a concept.
Re:Disappointing Video (Score:2, Insightful)
If civilization collapsed, everyone in an urban area would starve to the point of violence in about 5-7 days (see Hurricane Katrina), near the time that all food that could be fought over (domestic pets, dog food, etc) was gone (45 days at most), most urban folks would fan out into the surrounding rural areas, but would have no way to survive or support themselves. Rural folks would have to put them down in order to defend themselves. It'd take about 2-3 weeks after that for cannabilism to set in among urban survivors who remained in the urban centers.
Once the death and chaos, quite literally, died down, the rural folks would reestablish civilization with only a minor fuss. Not even much of a challenge given the existing books and tools they have lying about their residences and the knowledge of basic skills necessary to operate and maintain equipment with little or no external resources. Welding, skinning, preserving, brewing, etc are not terribly complex if you already have experience or good trainers. Apprenticeships existed for such a long time, and continue to exist, because they are highly effective. Some of the high-tech "luxuries" might have an extended break, but much of the "high technology" stuff has low complexity alternatives that would easily carry them through.
Civilization as we know it is precarious at best, and our urban centers far are less prepared to deal with real catastrophe than Easter Islanders, the Mayans, the Aztecs, the Egyptians, or any of the other major civilizations that basically evaporated leaving behind little more than village farmers and large monuments.
Re:Disappointing Video (Score:2, Insightful)
Thankfully, in my preparation for the ACTUAL zombie apocalypse, I have accumulated enough 5.56mm to handle quite a few urban ones.
Re:Making Fire Is HARD (Score:5, Insightful)
I know it's hard to start a fire like this. I've tried and tried and tried it unsuccessfully. But as soon as he skipped that step, he was no longer doing what he set out to do: creating dits and dahs without using any post-stone-age gear.
If I set out to walk across the country, but take a bus from Pittsburgh to Toledo because it's raining, and I know that I could walk between them, I haven't actually walked across the country, have I?
Re:Disappointing Video (Score:4, Insightful)
You better hope the guy who starts out with the hammer doesnt figure out this, much simpler, three step program
1) Hit guy offering food for your hammer on his head, with your hammer ...
2)
3) Dinner!!!!!!
Kinda missing the point there... (Score:3, Insightful)
Parent meant that you can't listen to digital radio broadcast on an analog radio - as any radio built from homemade components would be utterly analog.
As for wikipedia not being available...
It is not the knowledge without, it is the knowledge within that counts.
Most libraries are just as useful as wikipedia if you know WHAT you are looking for.
And just like with wikipedia, you don't have to know everything about a certain topic to be able to find texts on it - just a couple of keywords.
Sure, searching through dozens of books will page by page is slower than googling but hey - we are talking about being dumped back to early 19th century at least.
Oh and... you keep using that word... I do not think it means what you think it means. [wikipedia.org]
Re:Disappointing Video (Score:2, Insightful)
Apple and MS seem to have worked out how to hit people and get them to keep bringing food. That's the smart money/food right there.
Re:Disappointing Video (Score:2, Insightful)
All in parents:
Since when was the article about "if civilization failed" ? It was about "in prehistory", not "in the future". Convolution fail.
Re:Making Fire Is HARD (Score:3, Insightful)
Missing the point. He could "prove that it could be done" without going anywhere or doing anything, just by pointing at all of the instructions for doing each step, which he found online.
Instead he set out to actually do it. But didn't.