When you're growing up in a "regular" setting in Pennsylvania, you tend to regard the Amish as a sort of old-fashioned Luddite curiosity. But once you look into their beliefs and practices regarding technology, it is actually quite rational - and the rest of society could learn a thing or two from them.
Their policy on phones is a good example. While they allow them in particular cases (such as business or keeping in touch with distant family members), they've traditionally kept the phones out the home and in a separate "outhouse" sort of building.
Phones in the home continue to be rejected today, due in part to the symbolic connection to the world but also to preserve the institution of the home. Too much phone usage, as any parents of teenagers may be able to attest to, can compromise family life and time spent with family in general.
Having the telephone shanty away from the home maintains a degree of separation but allows the technology to be used when needed. Its distance from the home also discourages unnecessary calls.
The practical difference between this ideal and our own lives is so minute that the entire idea of shunning modern technology past an arbitrary date still doesn't end up making any sense. We sometimes hold up the Amish and similar communities as "more pure" versions of ourselves, when in reality they are families just like our own - just with (IMO oppressive and patriarchal) orthodox beliefs applied.
Any digital household can attest to maintaining rules like:
"No phones at the dinner table"
"No TV until after dinner and homework"
Is it also not possible to interrupt attentive family time with books and toys, or any other non-digital distractions? Maintaining rules and family time in a household isn't unique to these communities.
> The practical difference between this ideal and our own lives is so minute that the entire idea of shunning modern technology past an arbitrary date still doesn't end up making any sense.
First off, I don't think it's minute at all. Look outside - 95% of people are staring at a screen in their hands. Cell phones in general and social media in particular have completely taken over the social sphere. Casual conversation on the street or in the checkout line has been replaced with pull out your device and scroll. Online dating is rapidly becoming the default dating method. The examples are endless.
Secondly, the Amish don't shun any technology past an arbitrary date. They decide as a community whether or not to introduce a certain technology, depending on its perceived benefits or costs. This strikes me as a rather wise and mature approach, one that the general public would do well to adopt.
And finally, statistically, the Amish have far more robust families and birth rates as compared to the general population. So it seems pretty easy to make the argument that their system results in a greater focus on family, even if adopting similar behaviors (without becoming Amish) is theoretically possible.
I don't think many people with direct dealings with Amish or similar communities would consider them 'more pure'. Heck, I have had a few and the best I can say is that it is very complicated.
There is a lot to admire about Amish communities. They aren't really anti-technology, they're just into a different kind of technology. That has given them strong competitive advantages in areas, for example, they still export farm equipment to third world countries where animals still do a majority of farm labour. Some of their wagons are technological works of art...they just use different technology. The Amish/similar approach to family and group is quite interesting.
I remember going on a tour of a similar group's community. Afterwards, we had some refreshments in their community dining room and we got to mingle and talk to some people. I ended up in a conversation with these two gentlemen about farm implements. Within about thirty seconds, I realized that I was among fellow nerds. They reminded me more of startup founders than I ever would have expected. They were very innovative and obviously very smart. I am not convinced they even think their views on technology make sense, but at this point, I wager it's more about holding onto a way of life than genuine belief.
I might be wrong and hope that wasn't offensive, but that's just a nerdy outsider's point of view on their technology.
There are also downsides. Personally, I find some of their views patriarchal and oppressive, but I was not raised Amish, have never practiced any of those religious and so that's a very uninformed opinion.
The most important effect of all their rules is of course that it creates a cohesive community. If you look at it as a group evolutionary strategy it’s incredibly successful.
And of course most rules and laws in society are “arbitrary”, but in order to be applicable on a mass scale they need to be measurable. For example, there is nothing magical about the age of 18 or 21, but there has to be some easily measurable rule to prevent young and immature people from drinking. So we choose a completely “arbitrary” number like 18 and stick to it.
Some solve that with an answering machine - leave a message and set up a time for a call. Pretty much the same method we used back in the old days to call a friend "Hi Mrs Johnson, is billy there? No, he's out. Ok tell him I'll call back at 7pm"
If they're just looking to be in contact with each other, then I imagine they'd just walk over to their neighbour's house in person. I imagine the phones are more for situations where they might see the need to call a hospital, etc. (though I have no direct experience with the Amish on that part—only SW Ontario Mennonites)
Have visited Amish stores where they have pneumatic belts for the cash registers. The registers were about the only electric thing in sight and were powered by batteries and solar or generators. Lighting was all gas powered from propane tanks. They had some off the shelf lamps and things that had been re-rigged to run off LEDs and batteries (literally a car battery on the floor next to the lamp powering it). It was all very cool. Ceiling fans were also pneumatic. Building also had tons of skylights so during the day everything inside was lit with sunlight.
Some people think the Amish are against technology which isn’t really accurate. It’s more that they’re intent on being self-sufficient and against unnecessary uses of technology.
Powering air kitchen appliances from a diesel compressor seems no more self-sufficient than using electricity. A paddock windmill driving the compressor on the other hand...
Still have a hard time separating it from electrical powered by a paddock windmill or rooftop solar panels.
It's often about the opposite of self-sufficiency - community mutualism, and community visibility.
This compares to having a phone in a publicly visible booth away from houses. It wouldn't be hard to run the phone cable right to the house, but then people would be tempted to make personal, idle use of it.
All of this, except perhaps a lead acid battery, requires at least late 20th century technology, and a huge engineering effort to exist to get to the point of making it.
“Some people think the Amish are against technology which isn’t really accurate. It’s more that they’re intent on being self-sufficient and against unnecessary uses of technology.”
That’s not really accurate. They do have great respect for self sufficiency, but that’s not why they eschew technology.
They do it for religious reasons. They, much like the Jewish Hassids, have chosen a heyday from their past that they believe god wants them to adhere to the restrictions and customs of.
If they thought god was cool with iPhones, they’d get one tomorrow, self-sufficient or not.
My brother, who lives in rural Michigan and is surrounded by Amish, took me to one of their wood shops.
These Amish were allowed to run diesel engines, provided they started them with a fly-wheel and clutch system.
In this case, the diesel engine was in a shed at the side of the building, and was connected to a drive shaft that, through a series of transfer cases, belt and pulleys, secondary drive shafts, etc., powered everything you can imagine in a professional wood shop: planers, table saws, routers, etc., and a large population of battery-powered hand tools that had been converted to direct drive and were attached to flexible speedometer-like cables.
This is exactly how such shops were powered in the late 1800-early 1900s, before electricity was everywhere. The belt systems (sometimes in large factories there were thousands of machines running) were driven by water power, steam engines, and eventually electric motors.
You can still pretty easily buy antique tools with belt inputs, including heavy machine tools like lathes and milling machines.
I just recently saw a steam and gas engine show where they had a ton of still working washing machines and other household amenities that worked off a belt system and mini 1.5-2.5 hp steam engine.
They had larger lumber mill type saws and other industrial sized stuff that still worked too.
Was pretty crazy seeing vehicles still driving around the fairgrounds that were made so long ago.
It was very neat to realize how much our society is more of a throwaway society in terms of the honor in being able to repair/fix your own stuff and make it last for generations. I thought to myself, "There is no way in 100 years a Tesla would still be in working condition like these old steam engine vehicles."
For a few years after the introduction of electric motors they were still designing shops around line shafts with belt drives to every machine, because the electric motors were large and expensive enough that it didn't yet make sense to give each tool its own motor.
For instance the USS Olympia (C-6), commissioned in 1895 and now a museum ship in Philadelphia, was electrified but had a (very compact) line shaft machine shop on board.
IMO, the Amish/Mennonite or similar groups' systems never made a lot of sense, like many extreme religious orthodoxies.
Powering these appliances with compressed air doesn't change the fact that their engineering drawings were done on a computer, assembled in a factory rife with robotics, and delivered on a UPS truck. And that the most convenient method of producing compressed air involves internal combustion or electricity.
Nothing in the Bible supports electricity or any other 20th century technology being anything sinful. It's just another extremist group making their own bonkers interpretations of a religious book.
I think the Amish are glorified based on their work ethic and nice furniture, but I think the reality of living in that community has all the negatives of an extreme religious cult.
From my understanding they do not reject electricity because it's inherently sinful. Their rejection of it comes from desires to maintain a degree of separation from the rest of the world and to continue a tradition of hard work, which are biblically motivated.
I think any religious beliefs, from anywhere on the conservative to progressive spectrum, will have aspects that seem illogical to an outsider. On the scale of things, the reasoning for these restrictions doesn't seem too irrational.
IMO, it does seem unnecessarily inflammatory to refer to a pacifist group as extreme when that term is usually applied to groups engaged in terrorism, etc. I also find the label of cult too strong, unless you're using it in the formal sense. Look into the tradition of rumspringa [0]--unless you're being cynical it doesn't seem like a cultish practice.
The point of their approach to technology is to cherry pick that which supports, and does not diminish, their contemplative and social way of life. I don't think they're against computers either, to give an example. They're just against letting them be a temptation to idleness.
Obviously they live embedded in a world that doesn't work according to their rules. Everyone who wants to change society does that.
They aren't. There are in fact computers specifically designed and marketed for Amish business work. They're more like a classic Word Processor than what we call a computer.
An Amish-owned grocery store I frequent has ceiling fans that run off compressed air. They sound really cool in operation, each one emitting a subtle, "Pop, chk chk chk chk.. Pop, chk chk chk chk.."
If your house were a barn, there's nothing much to go wrong. Add some fire for heat, and now your house can burn down. Add some water for indoor plumbing and now your house can rot, flood, or simply be more attractive to termites (who need water plus wood). Add electricity for lighting and whatnot, and you now have a second way your house can burn down, or kill you in other ways.
Pneumatics are interesting because their failure modes don't involve destroying the structure they inhabit.
On the one hand, you're right, pneumatics won't burn the house down. On the other hand, their failure mode is to explode like a bomb and send shrapnel flying through human beings. But at least the house is safe?
That is really cool! Like other people have said there are many different types of Amish, with varying levels of acceptance of technology. In general they value hard work and being self-sufficient, so sometimes they do use generators or power tools if they need to. I recently had an Amish crew put new siding on my house but they only used hand tools.
The Amish realllly liked pop though, we would buy a big case of Coke, root beer, etc, and they would go through it very fast!
Not new technology, but I guess that's the point; pneumatic tools have been around for a long time and are very common in workshops where an ample supply of compressed air is available. I wonder how loud these are, that's one of the biggest drawbacks of air motors --- the shrill hissing and whining noises of a workshop are one of the more fatiguing sounds to hear.
the shrill hissing and whining noises of a workshop are one of the more fatiguing sounds to hear.
Can confirm.
In the early 2000's, I built a web site for a small factory that ran almost entirely on compressed air. Part of the project involved spending six months on the production floor photographing items as they were built. (15,000 different SKUs!)
I read an article in a woodworking magazine showing how an amish shop runs its traditionally electric machines on diesel power.
A long trench runs part the length of the shop with a shaft supported by bearing blocks. It terminates in an adjacent room housing a diesel engine. A belt system couples the engine to the shaft and air compressor.
Along the trench are all the standard machines you'd find in a shop: drill press, planer, sanders, table saw, joiner, etc. Each one had its electric motor removed and retrofitted with an elaborate system of shafts, belts and sheaves which connected to the main shaft in the trench.
They turned them on and off using a simple yet clever lever operated belt tensioner. By default the belt had enough slack to allow it to slip on the drive sheave preventing the machine from running. When the lever was pulled, it forced the belt between two tensioning sheaves tightening it which then started the machine. Very simple and clever and all made from wood.
Power tools were all air operated and one clever hack they made was a pneumatic wood glue dispenser. It was a 1-2 foot length of 3 or 4 inch PVC pipe, capped at both ends, one end being a threaded port. Plumbed to the top of the tube was an air pressure regulator to lower the pressure to just a few PSI. At the bottom, a hose which ran to a blow gun. You shut the air, opened the cap, filled it with glue, closed it and turned the air on. press the blow gun and now you have a glue gun! Really neat and my father built one for his wood shop.
One bonus of using air tools is they are lighter and more rugged than equivalent electric power tools. I've heard claims of 3-4x lifetime so long as they are fed clean, lubricated air. Nowhere near as efficient though as a lot of power is lost as heat in air compression.
As a common user of compressed air tools, there are countless drawbacks that likely negate the benefits:
1. Leakage. It is hard to avoid having connectors leak, requiring very frequent recompression of tanks even without use.
2. Efficiency. Compressed air tanks are very efficient for energy storage, but compressors and especially handheld tools are not. Also, if you are using a compressor powered by another easy-to-use source of energy such as electricity, you are just pointlessly throwing energy out the window.
3. Noise. You cannot get around the fact that the tools need to expel pressurized air, commonly powering either turbines (whirring noises) or pistons (adds banging/clicking noises). Compressors are also horribly noisy, with the best ones being a deep, powerful humm.
The reason pneumatic tools are popular with mechanics and the likes is related to the built-in cooling effect allowing for dense high-powered tools, and that high-torque impact tools are also quite easy to make this way. The environment they're used in is already noisy, so that aspect doesn't matter.
> Where air power equipment may become the real alternative power source is when it is combined with a wind turbine air compressor, which the Amish are beginning to use. During a good steady windy season many Amish may not need to run a regular air compressor for days at a time.
I have not heard about an wind/air turbine used to refill an air compressor (without electricity). Not sure how that would work, but I'm very interested in learning if anyone has background here.
I think the part that isn't intuitive to everyone is how to "accumulate" potential energy if you don't have batteries/capacitors. Like how I can't fill my car tire with my bike pump. There's... there's magic missing. Something that takes a small amount of pressure and overcomes the huge pressure the other way. Check valves or whatnot.
It's easier to perceive when you think about a massive turbine that can grind out a ton of electricity and power a compressor that by default produces a lot of air pressure.
These tools are really neat to me. I love the idea of things like a hand crank radio, pulleys, and long levers.
Presumably you could fill the tire of a transport truck with the bulb from a blood pressure cuff and a lot of time, but it's not intuitive to me what the mechanics are in between those two things.
What do they do about lights and everything else that requires electricity? I’m assuming the air only powers air powered tools or things like the article mentioned that take special air power?
Slightly related - I was wondering the other day if it would be practical to have mechanical fridge for a can of a beer where you'd keep pumping out the air, creating lower pressure, cooling down the beer. I was wondering if it would be practical, ie. you could pump the beer to nice chilled temperature without too much sweat?
There's a problem with this proposal: As cooling down the entire fridge via this method is not feasible, you'd have to thermally insulate the can from the outside case of the fridge. As in a normal household fridge, the can would have to give off its heat to the surrounding air inside the cooled chamber. The more of that air you pump out, the more that process slows down.
Instead, you could just take an ordinary mini fridge and replace the electric motor with a hand crank. Or maybe an exercise bike.
It could measure how much work you have put in and show you an estimate of how much longer you need to pedal/crank until you have expended as many calories as the beer contains.
The vacuum will serve as an excellent insulator and therefore be unable to cool the beer down. If you're near a cold mountain stream then I suggest placing the can in the stream for a bit until it cools down :)
If you don't want to use electricity, why not just use a gas fridge? No electricity, not moving mechanical parts (except possibly a gas valve, if you want to get all fancy and have it thermostatically controlled) - just a bunch of fluids flowing around a series of interlinked pipes.
Isn't that how refrigerators already work? I mean the stuff that is compressed / evaporated lives in its own subsystem but I don't think there's any reason why that wouldn't work if powered manually.
You could take advantage of the fact that stretching rubber bands heats them up, and relaxing them cools them down to build a mechanical refrigerator. Check it out.
I'm not sure I really see the difference between using compressed air powered tools and appliances and electrical ones. All of the hand tools at my work are air powered because the wet environment makes electrical ones dangerous. The air powered tools are also typically more powerful and run at higher rpms and have more horsepower than electrical ones. I'm not sure why the air powered appliances have less torque but air powered grinders and polishers definitely have more power than electic ones, I've used both.
Ah fair enough that makes more sense. The description made it a not quite as clear. I think it's too bad home air compressors tend to be more of a niche/hobbyist thing or situations like the Amish. I honestly never really appreciated the power and versatility of a compressed air system until working in a place that works off of and relies on it.
Amish are not anti-technology, they are technology-skeptic and will only adopt a technology if they see that the benefit outweighs the cost, and they are very conservative about their decisions.
Just looking at the result, it seems to have worked out well for them. They're a community that has maintained a focus on family and community, and are in a good position to withstand collapse scenarios, since they are much less dependent on the global economic system.
>only adopt a technology if they see that the benefit outweighs the cost
I remember reading this explanation a while ago and it seemed completely logical. I feel like I've been swept away with a lot of things without ever stopping to consider its necessity.
Thanks for the link! My initial reaction was quite similar to GP's. However, I still think that, if they use compressed air from a gasoline-based compressor to drive an appliance, that's as good as using a gasoline generator to drive the same appliance (with the option to use a wind-based generator instead).
Their issue with electricity is with depending on the grid, not with electricity per se. They want to minimize critical dependencies on outside sources, especially single outside sources.
Gasoline is a commodity available from many sources, so doesn't cause the kind of dependency the grid would. Many Amish do use non-grid electricity, from solar cells, batteries, windmill driven generators, or gas powered generators.
I wonder... would the same community be ok with building their own grid, with a small power generation plant? They could run it off hydro/wind/solar and end up LESS dependent on the outside world than they are currently (where they need a steady source of gasoline, the production of which relies on the very same electric grid they want no part of joining).
This feels like a very strange place to draw the line, thought I realize like all such social/religious things, a line has to bee drawn and can be redrawn in the future. Kind of like Shabbat elevators in NYC.[1] Both seem, to me as an outsider, to be somewhere between ingenious life-hack and outright cheating. But, it's not my life and they aren't asking my opinion.
It should be noted that "the Amish" is painting with a very broad brush. It's like saying "All Californians are surfer dudes."
There are many different groups of Amish, each with special rules.
For example, In some communities, tractors of prohibited. But in others, tractors are fine. And in still others, tractors are only OK as long as they don't have rubber tires.
As with any group of humans, generalization is often inaccurate.
One wonders about how solar panels fit into that. Seems of all people that Amish would be okay with only having minimal amounts of electricity at night.
I was wondering what the advantages of compressed air are over water. Given water is an incompressible fluid, I would have thought it was a much more efficient means of driving turbines and other moving equipment.
But the fact that it is incompressible makes it more difficult to use it as a store of energy to be used on demand.
One of the advantages of compressed air is you can let a little out of the tank to power one thing for a bit, then a little more to power a different thing, and only need to run the generator when the tank is out of air.
Univac built a 4 bit computer that ran off of compressed air using fluidics[0]. Making a TV would be much more difficult though. It is very difficult to make mechanical systems that can interact with electromagnetic radiation or work at similar frequencies. However we can get pretty far. The Scophony television is almost entirely mechanical. We feed the TV signal into a piezoelectric crystal which creates an ultrasonic wave that propagates through a clear fluid filled cell. We can shine light through this and the propagating wave will cause changes in light intensity due to the density variations. We can then scan this line of changing intensities through a some rotating mirrors to make a picture. Perhaps with an intense enough signal we could drive the piezoelectric directly, or perhaps we can make a MEMS based mechanical amplifier to amplify the tiny vibrations produced by a piezoelectric element directly driven by RF.
The big one is efficiency. Air has much bigger losses any time you "do anything" with it. Converting it to mechanical energy is particularly expensive.
This is not accurate (well, it depends on how strict you want to be about ion channels). Electrical synapses are almost vestigial in our nervous systems, we could live without and lose not much more than part of our sense of smell.
At some point, this kind of thing gets silly. If you're trying to take an end-run around your religious restrictions, what is really the point of sticking to them?
I'm reminded of appliances that have sabbath modes, where they work based on proximity sensors or other mechanisms that respect the letter, if not the intent, of Abrahamic law.
It’s amusing and curious that while they shun modern tech they acquiesce to compressed air, which is fine, but it leaks. Can they not make some sort of semi-universal mechanical driveshaft powered via pedal power? Either use a kind of bike mechanism or like antique sewing machines and have a flexible driveshaft (like a plumbers flexible snake/auger that has a coupling that’d fit into lots of applications and devices.
Sure it’s rubegoldbergian, but I mean they’re working with compressed air already.
This is a common foible of "educated public," and a lot of people misunderstand the Amish: they don't shun modern tech. The have cars and phones, computers and websites, and such. It's not about the tech but what the tech brings about. They consider the social implications of technology: Who does this technology replace? Who does this empower with good habits or bad habits? If I use this and then I am done, what do I do with it? Does this make me dependent on something out side of my control?
While they have technology, they limit who has/owns the technology. Complex tech is often communally used. But, personal technology is usually chosen with durability, simplicity, and reliability in mind. Check out their buggies[1]. These things aren't necessarily simple or cheap. Good ones are designed to last and be handed down, not like your old beater car you hand to your kid because it's frame is rusting out. They understand building technology quite well. We just don't think of it that way because of the materials used.
Point taken. I didn't mean to gloss over the nuance.
We could learn about buying things for the long run in mind when buying things. As well as taking social implications of deploying new technologies (the extremes like gamification, engagement, conflict, surveillance, mass consumption, etc.)
Saying they shun modern tech is a bit of an overstatement. More accurate would be that they approach it cautiously, making sure that it won't harm their community before adopting it.
When you're growing up in a "regular" setting in Pennsylvania, you tend to regard the Amish as a sort of old-fashioned Luddite curiosity. But once you look into their beliefs and practices regarding technology, it is actually quite rational - and the rest of society could learn a thing or two from them.
Their policy on phones is a good example. While they allow them in particular cases (such as business or keeping in touch with distant family members), they've traditionally kept the phones out the home and in a separate "outhouse" sort of building.
Phones in the home continue to be rejected today, due in part to the symbolic connection to the world but also to preserve the institution of the home. Too much phone usage, as any parents of teenagers may be able to attest to, can compromise family life and time spent with family in general.
Having the telephone shanty away from the home maintains a degree of separation but allows the technology to be used when needed. Its distance from the home also discourages unnecessary calls.
http://amishamerica.com/do-amish-use-telephones/
The practical difference between this ideal and our own lives is so minute that the entire idea of shunning modern technology past an arbitrary date still doesn't end up making any sense. We sometimes hold up the Amish and similar communities as "more pure" versions of ourselves, when in reality they are families just like our own - just with (IMO oppressive and patriarchal) orthodox beliefs applied.
Any digital household can attest to maintaining rules like:
"No phones at the dinner table"
"No TV until after dinner and homework"
Is it also not possible to interrupt attentive family time with books and toys, or any other non-digital distractions? Maintaining rules and family time in a household isn't unique to these communities.
> The practical difference between this ideal and our own lives is so minute that the entire idea of shunning modern technology past an arbitrary date still doesn't end up making any sense.
First off, I don't think it's minute at all. Look outside - 95% of people are staring at a screen in their hands. Cell phones in general and social media in particular have completely taken over the social sphere. Casual conversation on the street or in the checkout line has been replaced with pull out your device and scroll. Online dating is rapidly becoming the default dating method. The examples are endless.
Secondly, the Amish don't shun any technology past an arbitrary date. They decide as a community whether or not to introduce a certain technology, depending on its perceived benefits or costs. This strikes me as a rather wise and mature approach, one that the general public would do well to adopt.
And finally, statistically, the Amish have far more robust families and birth rates as compared to the general population. So it seems pretty easy to make the argument that their system results in a greater focus on family, even if adopting similar behaviors (without becoming Amish) is theoretically possible.
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I don't think many people with direct dealings with Amish or similar communities would consider them 'more pure'. Heck, I have had a few and the best I can say is that it is very complicated.
There is a lot to admire about Amish communities. They aren't really anti-technology, they're just into a different kind of technology. That has given them strong competitive advantages in areas, for example, they still export farm equipment to third world countries where animals still do a majority of farm labour. Some of their wagons are technological works of art...they just use different technology. The Amish/similar approach to family and group is quite interesting.
I remember going on a tour of a similar group's community. Afterwards, we had some refreshments in their community dining room and we got to mingle and talk to some people. I ended up in a conversation with these two gentlemen about farm implements. Within about thirty seconds, I realized that I was among fellow nerds. They reminded me more of startup founders than I ever would have expected. They were very innovative and obviously very smart. I am not convinced they even think their views on technology make sense, but at this point, I wager it's more about holding onto a way of life than genuine belief.
I might be wrong and hope that wasn't offensive, but that's just a nerdy outsider's point of view on their technology.
There are also downsides. Personally, I find some of their views patriarchal and oppressive, but I was not raised Amish, have never practiced any of those religious and so that's a very uninformed opinion.
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The most important effect of all their rules is of course that it creates a cohesive community. If you look at it as a group evolutionary strategy it’s incredibly successful.
And of course most rules and laws in society are “arbitrary”, but in order to be applicable on a mass scale they need to be measurable. For example, there is nothing magical about the age of 18 or 21, but there has to be some easily measurable rule to prevent young and immature people from drinking. So we choose a completely “arbitrary” number like 18 and stick to it.
Why is patriarchal used derogatorily?
I fail to see this as rational. Not least of which is if everyone has telephones in an outhouse how can two houses call each other?
Some solve that with an answering machine - leave a message and set up a time for a call. Pretty much the same method we used back in the old days to call a friend "Hi Mrs Johnson, is billy there? No, he's out. Ok tell him I'll call back at 7pm"
Telephones don't need to be real-time.
If they're just looking to be in contact with each other, then I imagine they'd just walk over to their neighbour's house in person. I imagine the phones are more for situations where they might see the need to call a hospital, etc. (though I have no direct experience with the Amish on that part—only SW Ontario Mennonites)
This is such a good illustration of the disparity between our lives and theirs.
Because the answer is, you go over and talk to them.
Have visited Amish stores where they have pneumatic belts for the cash registers. The registers were about the only electric thing in sight and were powered by batteries and solar or generators. Lighting was all gas powered from propane tanks. They had some off the shelf lamps and things that had been re-rigged to run off LEDs and batteries (literally a car battery on the floor next to the lamp powering it). It was all very cool. Ceiling fans were also pneumatic. Building also had tons of skylights so during the day everything inside was lit with sunlight.
Some people think the Amish are against technology which isn’t really accurate. It’s more that they’re intent on being self-sufficient and against unnecessary uses of technology.
Powering air kitchen appliances from a diesel compressor seems no more self-sufficient than using electricity. A paddock windmill driving the compressor on the other hand...
Still have a hard time separating it from electrical powered by a paddock windmill or rooftop solar panels.
It's often about the opposite of self-sufficiency - community mutualism, and community visibility.
This compares to having a phone in a publicly visible booth away from houses. It wouldn't be hard to run the phone cable right to the house, but then people would be tempted to make personal, idle use of it.
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Hope is a propane tank self sufficient? Or LEDs?
All of this, except perhaps a lead acid battery, requires at least late 20th century technology, and a huge engineering effort to exist to get to the point of making it.
“Some people think the Amish are against technology which isn’t really accurate. It’s more that they’re intent on being self-sufficient and against unnecessary uses of technology.”
That’s not really accurate. They do have great respect for self sufficiency, but that’s not why they eschew technology.
They do it for religious reasons. They, much like the Jewish Hassids, have chosen a heyday from their past that they believe god wants them to adhere to the restrictions and customs of.
If they thought god was cool with iPhones, they’d get one tomorrow, self-sufficient or not.
As a Jew who goes to a Hassidic minyan, I can assure you that none of us are stuck in a "heyday from the past."
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My brother, who lives in rural Michigan and is surrounded by Amish, took me to one of their wood shops.
These Amish were allowed to run diesel engines, provided they started them with a fly-wheel and clutch system.
In this case, the diesel engine was in a shed at the side of the building, and was connected to a drive shaft that, through a series of transfer cases, belt and pulleys, secondary drive shafts, etc., powered everything you can imagine in a professional wood shop: planers, table saws, routers, etc., and a large population of battery-powered hand tools that had been converted to direct drive and were attached to flexible speedometer-like cables.
It was extraordinary.
This is exactly how such shops were powered in the late 1800-early 1900s, before electricity was everywhere. The belt systems (sometimes in large factories there were thousands of machines running) were driven by water power, steam engines, and eventually electric motors.
You can still pretty easily buy antique tools with belt inputs, including heavy machine tools like lathes and milling machines.
Richard Scarry documented this in his work "What Do People Do All Day":
https://books.google.com/books?id=tuqKDQAAQBAJ&newbks=1&newb...
I just recently saw a steam and gas engine show where they had a ton of still working washing machines and other household amenities that worked off a belt system and mini 1.5-2.5 hp steam engine.
They had larger lumber mill type saws and other industrial sized stuff that still worked too.
Was pretty crazy seeing vehicles still driving around the fairgrounds that were made so long ago.
It was very neat to realize how much our society is more of a throwaway society in terms of the honor in being able to repair/fix your own stuff and make it last for generations. I thought to myself, "There is no way in 100 years a Tesla would still be in working condition like these old steam engine vehicles."
For a few years after the introduction of electric motors they were still designing shops around line shafts with belt drives to every machine, because the electric motors were large and expensive enough that it didn't yet make sense to give each tool its own motor.
For instance the USS Olympia (C-6), commissioned in 1895 and now a museum ship in Philadelphia, was electrified but had a (very compact) line shaft machine shop on board.
IMO, the Amish/Mennonite or similar groups' systems never made a lot of sense, like many extreme religious orthodoxies.
Powering these appliances with compressed air doesn't change the fact that their engineering drawings were done on a computer, assembled in a factory rife with robotics, and delivered on a UPS truck. And that the most convenient method of producing compressed air involves internal combustion or electricity.
Nothing in the Bible supports electricity or any other 20th century technology being anything sinful. It's just another extremist group making their own bonkers interpretations of a religious book.
I think the Amish are glorified based on their work ethic and nice furniture, but I think the reality of living in that community has all the negatives of an extreme religious cult.
From my understanding they do not reject electricity because it's inherently sinful. Their rejection of it comes from desires to maintain a degree of separation from the rest of the world and to continue a tradition of hard work, which are biblically motivated.
I think any religious beliefs, from anywhere on the conservative to progressive spectrum, will have aspects that seem illogical to an outsider. On the scale of things, the reasoning for these restrictions doesn't seem too irrational.
IMO, it does seem unnecessarily inflammatory to refer to a pacifist group as extreme when that term is usually applied to groups engaged in terrorism, etc. I also find the label of cult too strong, unless you're using it in the formal sense. Look into the tradition of rumspringa [0]--unless you're being cynical it doesn't seem like a cultish practice.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rumspringa
The point of their approach to technology is to cherry pick that which supports, and does not diminish, their contemplative and social way of life. I don't think they're against computers either, to give an example. They're just against letting them be a temptation to idleness.
Obviously they live embedded in a world that doesn't work according to their rules. Everyone who wants to change society does that.
> I don't think they're against computers either
They aren't. There are in fact computers specifically designed and marketed for Amish business work. They're more like a classic Word Processor than what we call a computer.
That’s what I find admirable, when you put hard work into something you learn to value things and the work of others.
An Amish-owned grocery store I frequent has ceiling fans that run off compressed air. They sound really cool in operation, each one emitting a subtle, "Pop, chk chk chk chk.. Pop, chk chk chk chk.."
As a home owner this intrigues me.
If your house were a barn, there's nothing much to go wrong. Add some fire for heat, and now your house can burn down. Add some water for indoor plumbing and now your house can rot, flood, or simply be more attractive to termites (who need water plus wood). Add electricity for lighting and whatnot, and you now have a second way your house can burn down, or kill you in other ways.
Pneumatics are interesting because their failure modes don't involve destroying the structure they inhabit.
> Pneumatics are interesting because their failure modes don't involve destroying the structure they inhabit.
That depends on where they store the compressed air and how high the pressure goes. Sudden decompression can produce a very destructive shockwave.
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On the one hand, you're right, pneumatics won't burn the house down. On the other hand, their failure mode is to explode like a bomb and send shrapnel flying through human beings. But at least the house is safe?
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That is really cool! Like other people have said there are many different types of Amish, with varying levels of acceptance of technology. In general they value hard work and being self-sufficient, so sometimes they do use generators or power tools if they need to. I recently had an Amish crew put new siding on my house but they only used hand tools.
The Amish realllly liked pop though, we would buy a big case of Coke, root beer, etc, and they would go through it very fast!
Not new technology, but I guess that's the point; pneumatic tools have been around for a long time and are very common in workshops where an ample supply of compressed air is available. I wonder how loud these are, that's one of the biggest drawbacks of air motors --- the shrill hissing and whining noises of a workshop are one of the more fatiguing sounds to hear.
Relatedly, the Paris compressed-air power network was discussed here several months ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19782760
the shrill hissing and whining noises of a workshop are one of the more fatiguing sounds to hear.
Can confirm.
In the early 2000's, I built a web site for a small factory that ran almost entirely on compressed air. Part of the project involved spending six months on the production floor photographing items as they were built. (15,000 different SKUs!)
I wonder if you could get the website itself to run on compressed air…
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I read an article in a woodworking magazine showing how an amish shop runs its traditionally electric machines on diesel power.
A long trench runs part the length of the shop with a shaft supported by bearing blocks. It terminates in an adjacent room housing a diesel engine. A belt system couples the engine to the shaft and air compressor.
Along the trench are all the standard machines you'd find in a shop: drill press, planer, sanders, table saw, joiner, etc. Each one had its electric motor removed and retrofitted with an elaborate system of shafts, belts and sheaves which connected to the main shaft in the trench.
They turned them on and off using a simple yet clever lever operated belt tensioner. By default the belt had enough slack to allow it to slip on the drive sheave preventing the machine from running. When the lever was pulled, it forced the belt between two tensioning sheaves tightening it which then started the machine. Very simple and clever and all made from wood.
Power tools were all air operated and one clever hack they made was a pneumatic wood glue dispenser. It was a 1-2 foot length of 3 or 4 inch PVC pipe, capped at both ends, one end being a threaded port. Plumbed to the top of the tube was an air pressure regulator to lower the pressure to just a few PSI. At the bottom, a hose which ran to a blow gun. You shut the air, opened the cap, filled it with glue, closed it and turned the air on. press the blow gun and now you have a glue gun! Really neat and my father built one for his wood shop.
One bonus of using air tools is they are lighter and more rugged than equivalent electric power tools. I've heard claims of 3-4x lifetime so long as they are fed clean, lubricated air. Nowhere near as efficient though as a lot of power is lost as heat in air compression.
There is a good article about the benefits of compressed air technology on low tech magazine https://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2018/05/ditch-the-batteries-...
As a common user of compressed air tools, there are countless drawbacks that likely negate the benefits:
1. Leakage. It is hard to avoid having connectors leak, requiring very frequent recompression of tanks even without use.
2. Efficiency. Compressed air tanks are very efficient for energy storage, but compressors and especially handheld tools are not. Also, if you are using a compressor powered by another easy-to-use source of energy such as electricity, you are just pointlessly throwing energy out the window.
3. Noise. You cannot get around the fact that the tools need to expel pressurized air, commonly powering either turbines (whirring noises) or pistons (adds banging/clicking noises). Compressors are also horribly noisy, with the best ones being a deep, powerful humm.
The reason pneumatic tools are popular with mechanics and the likes is related to the built-in cooling effect allowing for dense high-powered tools, and that high-torque impact tools are also quite easy to make this way. The environment they're used in is already noisy, so that aspect doesn't matter.
> Where air power equipment may become the real alternative power source is when it is combined with a wind turbine air compressor, which the Amish are beginning to use. During a good steady windy season many Amish may not need to run a regular air compressor for days at a time.
I have not heard about an wind/air turbine used to refill an air compressor (without electricity). Not sure how that would work, but I'm very interested in learning if anyone has background here.
> I have not heard about an wind/air turbine used to refill an air compressor (without electricity). Not sure how that would work
A wind turbine turns rotation into electricity.
A motor turns electricity into rotation.
A compressor uses rotation to compress gas.
You can remove the electricity between stages 1 and 2.
I think the part that isn't intuitive to everyone is how to "accumulate" potential energy if you don't have batteries/capacitors. Like how I can't fill my car tire with my bike pump. There's... there's magic missing. Something that takes a small amount of pressure and overcomes the huge pressure the other way. Check valves or whatnot.
It's easier to perceive when you think about a massive turbine that can grind out a ton of electricity and power a compressor that by default produces a lot of air pressure.
These tools are really neat to me. I love the idea of things like a hand crank radio, pulleys, and long levers.
Presumably you could fill the tire of a transport truck with the bulb from a blood pressure cuff and a lot of time, but it's not intuitive to me what the mechanics are in between those two things.
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Wind turbine rotation turns the compressor. (With the right gearing)
Edit: I must have skipped over your last sentence. I thought you wanted all those electrical steps for some reason!
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Have heard of that done here in NZ. A remote workshop had wind turbines turning pumps that filled great big air tanks. Those tanks ran the workshop.
They were not shunning technology it was just a cheaper option than running power out there or batteries.
What do they do about lights and everything else that requires electricity? I’m assuming the air only powers air powered tools or things like the article mentioned that take special air power?
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Slightly related - I was wondering the other day if it would be practical to have mechanical fridge for a can of a beer where you'd keep pumping out the air, creating lower pressure, cooling down the beer. I was wondering if it would be practical, ie. you could pump the beer to nice chilled temperature without too much sweat?
There's a problem with this proposal: As cooling down the entire fridge via this method is not feasible, you'd have to thermally insulate the can from the outside case of the fridge. As in a normal household fridge, the can would have to give off its heat to the surrounding air inside the cooled chamber. The more of that air you pump out, the more that process slows down.
Instead, you could just take an ordinary mini fridge and replace the electric motor with a hand crank. Or maybe an exercise bike.
It could measure how much work you have put in and show you an estimate of how much longer you need to pedal/crank until you have expended as many calories as the beer contains.
The vacuum will serve as an excellent insulator and therefore be unable to cool the beer down. If you're near a cold mountain stream then I suggest placing the can in the stream for a bit until it cools down :)
If you don't want to use electricity, why not just use a gas fridge? No electricity, not moving mechanical parts (except possibly a gas valve, if you want to get all fancy and have it thermostatically controlled) - just a bunch of fluids flowing around a series of interlinked pipes.
The best explanation I've ever read about how they work: https://web.archive.org/web/20051128061124/http://www.cam.ne...
Isn't that how refrigerators already work? I mean the stuff that is compressed / evaporated lives in its own subsystem but I don't think there's any reason why that wouldn't work if powered manually.
You could take advantage of the fact that stretching rubber bands heats them up, and relaxing them cools them down to build a mechanical refrigerator. Check it out.
A refrigerator that works by stretching rubber bands https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lfmrvxB154w
Not air pressure-driven, the pot-in-pot fridge works on evaporation.
Exhalation, Ted Chiang http://www.nightshadebooks.com/Downloads/Exhalation%20-%20Te... (full text)
I'm not sure I really see the difference between using compressed air powered tools and appliances and electrical ones. All of the hand tools at my work are air powered because the wet environment makes electrical ones dangerous. The air powered tools are also typically more powerful and run at higher rpms and have more horsepower than electrical ones. I'm not sure why the air powered appliances have less torque but air powered grinders and polishers definitely have more power than electic ones, I've used both.
In general, I don't think air powered tools have less torque. Rather, they have less torque at low rpms.
Ah fair enough that makes more sense. The description made it a not quite as clear. I think it's too bad home air compressors tend to be more of a niche/hobbyist thing or situations like the Amish. I honestly never really appreciated the power and versatility of a compressed air system until working in a place that works off of and relies on it.
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> Most of the Amish fill large air storage tanks using a gasoline or diesel powered engine.
Isn't that cheating? The electricity is not fine, but gasoline and diesel powered engine, that itself is extracted and refined using electricity is.
They should have compressed air using horse power.
Amish are not anti-technology, they are technology-skeptic and will only adopt a technology if they see that the benefit outweighs the cost, and they are very conservative about their decisions.
http://amishamerica.com/technology/
Just looking at the result, it seems to have worked out well for them. They're a community that has maintained a focus on family and community, and are in a good position to withstand collapse scenarios, since they are much less dependent on the global economic system.
There are also several different "strains" of Amishism, with substantial differences in their technology adoption stances.
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>only adopt a technology if they see that the benefit outweighs the cost
I remember reading this explanation a while ago and it seemed completely logical. I feel like I've been swept away with a lot of things without ever stopping to consider its necessity.
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I can't help to think that it's entirely so the Amish elites/aristocrats keep themselves in power by limiting access to Media.
But interesting take, they would survive in things like Solar storms/electrical grid collapsed.
Thanks for the link! My initial reaction was quite similar to GP's. However, I still think that, if they use compressed air from a gasoline-based compressor to drive an appliance, that's as good as using a gasoline generator to drive the same appliance (with the option to use a wind-based generator instead).
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Their issue with electricity is with depending on the grid, not with electricity per se. They want to minimize critical dependencies on outside sources, especially single outside sources.
Gasoline is a commodity available from many sources, so doesn't cause the kind of dependency the grid would. Many Amish do use non-grid electricity, from solar cells, batteries, windmill driven generators, or gas powered generators.
I wonder... would the same community be ok with building their own grid, with a small power generation plant? They could run it off hydro/wind/solar and end up LESS dependent on the outside world than they are currently (where they need a steady source of gasoline, the production of which relies on the very same electric grid they want no part of joining).
This feels like a very strange place to draw the line, thought I realize like all such social/religious things, a line has to bee drawn and can be redrawn in the future. Kind of like Shabbat elevators in NYC.[1] Both seem, to me as an outsider, to be somewhere between ingenious life-hack and outright cheating. But, it's not my life and they aren't asking my opinion.
1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shabbat_elevator
So, do Amish consider solar power acceptable?
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It should be noted that "the Amish" is painting with a very broad brush. It's like saying "All Californians are surfer dudes."
There are many different groups of Amish, each with special rules.
For example, In some communities, tractors of prohibited. But in others, tractors are fine. And in still others, tractors are only OK as long as they don't have rubber tires.
As with any group of humans, generalization is often inaccurate.
Curious, why no rubber tires?
(Or was that just an example to make point)
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One wonders about how solar panels fit into that. Seems of all people that Amish would be okay with only having minimal amounts of electricity at night.
Gasoline engines use electricity to ignite compressed fuel-air charges. Spark plugs work by arcing electricity over a measured air gap.
Human-cranked flywheel would be even better as it excludes the use of horse-technology, at least for that particular purpose.
This is getting to the absurd, how does the air get compressed ? Steam engine ?
This reminded me of an article I saw some time ago (https://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2013/09/power-from-the-tap-w...) about appliances (including but not limited to kitchen ones) powered by water from the tap.
I was wondering what the advantages of compressed air are over water. Given water is an incompressible fluid, I would have thought it was a much more efficient means of driving turbines and other moving equipment.
But the fact that it is incompressible makes it more difficult to use it as a store of energy to be used on demand.
One of the advantages of compressed air is you can let a little out of the tank to power one thing for a bit, then a little more to power a different thing, and only need to run the generator when the tank is out of air.
An air leak usually doesn't cause damage.
I remembered about this compressed air car. That's an interesting tech: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compressed_air_car
An interesting challenge would be making a compressed air powered computer or tv for them.
Univac built a 4 bit computer that ran off of compressed air using fluidics[0]. Making a TV would be much more difficult though. It is very difficult to make mechanical systems that can interact with electromagnetic radiation or work at similar frequencies. However we can get pretty far. The Scophony television is almost entirely mechanical. We feed the TV signal into a piezoelectric crystal which creates an ultrasonic wave that propagates through a clear fluid filled cell. We can shine light through this and the propagating wave will cause changes in light intensity due to the density variations. We can then scan this line of changing intensities through a some rotating mirrors to make a picture. Perhaps with an intense enough signal we could drive the piezoelectric directly, or perhaps we can make a MEMS based mechanical amplifier to amplify the tiny vibrations produced by a piezoelectric element directly driven by RF.
[0]https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1464112 [1]http://www.bluehaze.com.au/modlight/UltrasoundMod.htm
Heard of generators? You can do that.
Well I meant with no electricity at all. Here are some people who attempted it: https://www.niklasroy.com/workshop/184/PneumaticComputing
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Combined with a wind turbine air compressor as described in the article, that's some serious solarpunk stuff right there.
AirPunk
what are the limits of compressed air as a replacement for electricity?
The big one is efficiency. Air has much bigger losses any time you "do anything" with it. Converting it to mechanical energy is particularly expensive.
Someone should tell them, that their bodies are running on electricity...
I doubt the amish have anything against electricity per se. I bet they are against TV, radio and internet.
This is not accurate (well, it depends on how strict you want to be about ion channels). Electrical synapses are almost vestigial in our nervous systems, we could live without and lose not much more than part of our sense of smell.
At some point, this kind of thing gets silly. If you're trying to take an end-run around your religious restrictions, what is really the point of sticking to them?
I'm reminded of appliances that have sabbath modes, where they work based on proximity sensors or other mechanisms that respect the letter, if not the intent, of Abrahamic law.
Those are not divine mandates, they are social conventions more than religious restrictions.
As they are all
It’s amusing and curious that while they shun modern tech they acquiesce to compressed air, which is fine, but it leaks. Can they not make some sort of semi-universal mechanical driveshaft powered via pedal power? Either use a kind of bike mechanism or like antique sewing machines and have a flexible driveshaft (like a plumbers flexible snake/auger that has a coupling that’d fit into lots of applications and devices.
Sure it’s rubegoldbergian, but I mean they’re working with compressed air already.
> while they shun modern tech
This is a common foible of "educated public," and a lot of people misunderstand the Amish: they don't shun modern tech. The have cars and phones, computers and websites, and such. It's not about the tech but what the tech brings about. They consider the social implications of technology: Who does this technology replace? Who does this empower with good habits or bad habits? If I use this and then I am done, what do I do with it? Does this make me dependent on something out side of my control?
While they have technology, they limit who has/owns the technology. Complex tech is often communally used. But, personal technology is usually chosen with durability, simplicity, and reliability in mind. Check out their buggies[1]. These things aren't necessarily simple or cheap. Good ones are designed to last and be handed down, not like your old beater car you hand to your kid because it's frame is rusting out. They understand building technology quite well. We just don't think of it that way because of the materials used.
[1] https://www.popularmechanics.com/cars/car-technology/a24666/...
When you put it that way, why aren't we all Amish? It sounds great.
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Point taken. I didn't mean to gloss over the nuance.
We could learn about buying things for the long run in mind when buying things. As well as taking social implications of deploying new technologies (the extremes like gamification, engagement, conflict, surveillance, mass consumption, etc.)
Saying they shun modern tech is a bit of an overstatement. More accurate would be that they approach it cautiously, making sure that it won't harm their community before adopting it.
Here is a good article about this: https://kk.org/thetechnium/amish-hackers-a/