
Could We Run Modern Society on Human Power Alone? - MaurizioPz
http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2017/05/could-we-run-modern-society-on-human-power-alone.html
======
apsec112
This will never, ever make economic sense. Human labor is orders of magnitude
too valuable to waste on power generation. A fit man can, in an hour, produce
about 400 watt-hours of electricity, worth about $0.05; his labor would be
worth at least $10 in a developed country. In the unlikely event that all
modern technology ceased to exist, we would revert to using animals and wood
for power, like they did in the 1700s.

~~~
brohee
Someone producing 400W for an hour is not a fit man, it's a star endurance
athlete. It's the kind of power top performer in tour de France can provide.

~~~
ptaipale
Indeed. At a local nuclear power station there's a visitor center where one
can experiment how to generate electricity with an exercise bike. With
moderate power you can power a tablet computer or an incandescent light bulb,
but the water kettle comes on only with actual athletes, and even then, the
small light bulb goes off, and even a professional cyclist can't sustain that
power for longer than a brief moment.

It's just pointless to generate electricity by human power. It's not pointless
to ride a bike.

~~~
diziet
Yes, as a benchmark an 80kg male rider that's an athlete but not a pro (say
cat1 or cat2) can produce maybe 1200-1300 watts for 10 seconds, and maybe 400
watts or so for 5 minutes.

------
verytrivial
I think people are missing the fact this is being run by an art collective. It
is trying to ask questions and show what sort of compromises people might
_need_ to make if/when other energy sources are off the table. I love it.

~~~
ars
> when other energy sources are off the table

Hu? Where do you [they] think the human power comes from? It comes from food -
you could just burn those plants for fuel, and skip the useless multiple
conversion.

What does flowing the energy through a human accomplish? It certainly doesn't
change the energy source.

~~~
verytrivial
I understand the Haber process. I don't think most people know of or care
about it. The point their making here is without the magic of current energy
supplies things get very weird and difficult, even then you try really hard.

------
Turing_Machine
"Most work, however, we carried out ourselves."

"a human needs to be motivated in order to produce energy."

Historically, "ourselves" was equivalent to "members of a disfavored ethnic
group and/or social class" and the "motivation" was provided by guys with
swords, whips, pistols, etc.

I'd rather not see routine slavery/serfdom come back, thanks.

~~~
OldSchoolJohnny
They specifically address your point; you didn't read it.

~~~
seandougall
But they don't, unless I missed it, address the death toll of large-scale,
human-powered construction projects like the Panama Canal (5,609 dead). To me
it reads like a romanticization of brutal working conditions, and waving aside
the issue of slavery by saying "but we can make it fun!" doesn't really help.

------
mtempleton
>If students have to generate their own power, they are much less likely to
waste it. How far would students go to reduce their efforts? Would hot showers
go out of fashion?

The article's discussion of human power and incentives to use it beg the point
to be made about the right way to fix the tragedy of the commons market
failure with atmospheric pollution (and all the other problems with fossil
fuels as well).

There are so many ways to reduce energy consumption that government regulation
can't possibly legislate and adequately regulate (and it's barely even trying
at the moment).

For example, I try to make a point to bike, walk, take the stairs, use
efficient driving habits, and try to often take cold showers. I admittedly do
this primarily because I like the exercise, the cold water is more refreshing
and better for my skin, I save money, but as as an added bonus I feel some
satisfaction that I consume less fossil fuels. But I would do all these things
more if I saved more money from it.

And taxing bad things is better than taxing good things (like income and
investment).

I think this is one of the things we will look back from the future and think,
what were people thinking--they taxed jobs when they could have taxed
something like environmental destruction? What?

But American politics are what they are. Our public transport across the
country varies, but generally it is laughably bad, and that's just another
example of an extremely low hanging fruit to grab.

~~~
ptaipale
The tragedy of taxing bad things is that if the taxation works, and the bad
things (e.g. pollution) start to go away, then the government loses tax
revenue. And for the government, that's worse than any pollution.

So we see all governments going through loops and hoops to tax something bad,
and at the same time regulate so that a sufficient amount of that bad thing
still happens so they wouldn't lose the tax money.

~~~
jfoutz
Of course, this can be limited by requiring funds for a specific purpose, such
as mitigating pollution. While far from perfect, gas tax going to pay for
roads is a decent feedback loop.

Tax 'bad' thing, to pay for education about or mitigation of 'bad' thing. the
feedback loop solves itself.

------
dualogy
Pff, "modern society". Most hunting populations have been calculated to yield
10kcals of food for every 1kcal of expenditure --- our fancy modern fuels OTOH
result in more like 1kcal food yield per (non-edible of course) 10kcal
expenditure. Not exact figures of course but the difference is _that_
profound. "Human power" thus "wins", then --- but not to "run modern society",
of course.

~~~
prodmerc
That doesn't seem right - surely a modern animal farm yields more food per
energy expended than a group of hunters?

~~~
humblehee
Anthropology classes teach that the parent comment is true: hunter-gatherer
societies are much more energy efficient. Every step of modernization, from
animal to machine power, decreases energy efficiency but increases _intensity_
: food can be made more quickly and in less space. Consider that animals are
more powerful, but require food and water of their own. Tractors are more
powerful still, but require fuel, steel, and huge industries that bring those
two together.

The best citation I have off hand is this
[https://anthropology.artsci.wustl.edu/courses/wucrsl/L48/361...](https://anthropology.artsci.wustl.edu/courses/wucrsl/L48/361/FL2017)

~~~
mabbo
It does make sense when you consider where the energy all comes from: the sun.

Plants absorb solar energy and store it as chemical energy. Animals roam far
and wide to eat those plants, collecting the chemical energy in one place-
themselves. Then human hunters come along and simply 'pick' the energy from
the dense source that is the animal.

Now, the humans don't need to do much work because the energy is all in one
place (they just need to _find_ that one place). But the energy itself was
collected over a huge area.

------
no1youknowz
Yes of course.

Rick and Morty covered that in this episode.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o_CyMqQBO8w](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o_CyMqQBO8w)

~~~
ubersoldat2k7
And Black Mirror too.

~~~
threepipeproblm
Referring to the episode "Fifteen Million Merits". IMO it's one of the
greatest dystopian works ever.

------
TulliusCicero
> For extra motivation, all exercise machines in our prototype human power
> plant are facing a jacuzzi & shower where girls are invited to encourage the
> boys to flex their muscles and generate more power. Of course, the gender
> roles could be reversed, but during the first experiments we discovered that
> this is less energy-efficient. Girls don't seem to get motivated by guys in
> jacuzzis, at least not to the extent that guys get motivated by girls in
> jacuzzis.

Clever, but I'm guessing many will find this creepy or 'problematic'.

~~~
TheAdamAndChe
I don't see how acknowledging and using differences in psychology between men
and women would be problematic. Could you please explain why you believe it
would be?

~~~
skywhopper
To the extent they are describing observed behavior, it's not problematic.
However, stating generalizations in a flip, cliche-confirming way _can_ be
problematic, inasmuch as it reinforces the negative stereotypes.

In this particular example, I certainly have no problem believing that it's
true that among contemporary college-aged individuals from American and
European cultural traditions, that on average the men would be more motivated
to work out harder by the chance to see scantily clad women in a jacuzzi than
the reverse. But that's extremely unlikely to be true for _all_ men or _all_
women. I would doubt that it's true for homosexual individuals. I would doubt
that it's true for people raised in cultures that aren't so open to the
display and ogling of near-naked humans, or contrariwise, cultures wherein the
display of near-naked human form is not so sexualized.

This statement would be a cute aside between two people who share a similar
cultural background. But in a semi-scientific article describing a utopian
vision of power generation, it feels out of place to me.

From a global point of view, it's narrow-minded. The generalization given is
not true of all cultures. From an individual point of view, generalizations
about men and women who do share our culture tell us nothing about the
individual in front of our face, who may or may not personally fit in with the
profile. From a camaraderie-building point of view for residents of the
building, making decisions about how to run the residents' responsibilities
based on sexual objectification of other residents is probably not going to
build a healthy local culture. And from a purely practical point of view,
ignoring individual preferences and motivations is a great way to get
substandard performance from everyone. Maybe the chance to see the girls in
the jacuzzi would motivate the guys more than the girls, but I am betting it's
unlikely to be the best strategy to get the best performance out of each
individual man and woman.

The point is, it's a mistake to embrace these generalizations as universal
truisms. They are anything but. And relying on them leads you to make poor and
sometimes hurtful assumptions about other people.

~~~
TheAdamAndChe
The poster isn't talking about absolute truisms, but generalities. And
generally, men tend to be less selective towards their mates than women due to
sexual dimorphism. And yes, those differences extend into psychology[1].
Acting like there are no norms between the sexes in an attempt to placate
those outside the norm goes too far. Yes, we need to be accepting of those who
aren't normal, but that doesn't mean we need to ostracize the majority of
normal people in the process.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_differences_in_psychology](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_differences_in_psychology)

------
GeorgeRichard
> Each student in the human powered Van Unnik student building is responsible
> for generating the electricity that’s used in his or her individual room.

No elderly or physically disabled students need apply.

~~~
threepipeproblm
You think it's eevil for people to generate their own power, because not
everyone can do it?

------
TulliusCicero
Makes sense that they'd try this in the Netherlands. The Netherlands has a
_very_ high mode share of active transportation (walk/bike). For example, the
walk+bike mode share in Amsterdam is 56% (chart includes other cities in
Europe):
[https://charts.datawrapper.de/JsIir/index.html#embed](https://charts.datawrapper.de/JsIir/index.html#embed)

By contrast, most US cities are well under 10%. Even LA, which has pretty
excellent weather overall, is only at 4%:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modal_share](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modal_share)

~~~
hn_throwaway_99
LA is a bad example, as it's also notoriously a car-centric city that is
unfriendly to walkers/bikers. Better example would be something like Portland.

~~~
TulliusCicero
> a car-centric city that is unfriendly to walkers/bikers

1\. This is true of nearly all cities in the US, and

2\. This feeds into my point about cultures favoring physical activity or not.
LA's geography/weather is great for walking and biking. What holds it back are
intentional design decisions borne out of culture.

------
codeulike
The post-global-warmjng sci fi novel The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi deals
with this scenario: all energy is measured in calories and workers prepare
clockwork springs that store energy to power devices. It's a great novel, too.

~~~
pja
Which is wildly unrealistic of course. There’s no material that can take the
tension such springs would have to cope with. Lots of SF books ask you to take
one or two impossible things as givens in order to tell the story of course,
but this one pushed things a little far for me.

The repeated "lets rape the sex bot again" scenes didn't help either. Funny
how when she gets her revenge, that’s not described at all, just the
aftermath. But we get page after page of lascivious detail on her abuse.
Frankly, it left a really bad taste & I didn’t want to read anything by the
author in question ever again.

~~~
zero_intp
The very technology of the spring winding is a McGuffin in the story.

------
LoSboccacc
well, no: unless the whole campus is also built without machinery, you're
trading upfront energy (building with more insulation, building the additional
power storage retrieval distribution system etc) with the ability to sustain
the building with low energy later on

also, James May tried to plug gym machinery to an electric car, the human
output is just too low for electrical appliances - think not laptops, but
washing machines, vacuum cleaners etc.

------
frankus
Once you get past the point of "energy I would have expended anyway for
exercise/to relieve boredom" you run into the fact that humans just aren't a
very good way of converting resources (food and the energy/minerals needed to
grow it) into mechanical energy.

The modern food system is woefully inefficient at converting primary energy
into food calories and the human body isn't all that great at it converting
food into mechanical work. Useful amounts of heat are even more elusive.
Toasting a slice of bread might take a half hour of vigorous exercise.

I'm pretty sure it would take more energy to heat a jacuzzi than one could
extract from a dozen people showing off in front of it.

------
frankus
What this misses is that we don't really have any way of "generating" power
aside from nuclear reactions.

It's all converting from one form to another. In the case of "human power"
it's extracting energy from plants and animals that we kill.

Wait but Why has an excellent deep dive on this:
[http://waitbutwhy.com/2015/06/how-tesla-will-change-your-
lif...](http://waitbutwhy.com/2015/06/how-tesla-will-change-your-
life.html#part1)

------
solotronics
from the perspective of an engineer this is stupid. humans can not generate
anywhere near the power we consume currently. if you want to experience life
as a 5th century serf go ahead

------
peterwwillis
You can motivate people to do manual labor a lot of ways, but this does not
mean they will like it. Fear of death is a good motivator. "Hey, let's have
fun working out!" is not a good motivator.

On top of this, the premise is crazy. They want to have two societies: one
that produces technology with non-human-generated power so the other society
can use that technology to live on human-generated power.

------
spodek
One of the more thought-provoking articles I've read in a long time.

If you think they're dreaming, I suggest reading it nor for engineering
detail, but to try out their perspective. Most people would answer 'no,' leave
it at that, and not reach some interesting perspectives they did.

Not that it goes into engineering detail, but for the creativity,
thoughtfulness, and, most importantly, change in perspective from the
predominant views of: we must produce more power! ... we must not change our
way of looking at things!

I use my rowing machine regularly, which creates resistance through a fan and
wind resistance. If it used a generator, I could power most of my apartment's
electrical needs. Maybe not my refrigerator, which I shouldn't use when it's
cold outside. Most of my electrical bill is fixed costs and taxes, not my
electrical use, so a little less power and I could drop my contract. Articles
like this one get me thinking that way.

If you keep extending how little you can use and what the world would be like
if we had to work for our power instead of lazily flicking a switch and not
caring about externalities, it's very interesting. Not to mention what it
would do to our declining physical fitness, growing obesity, increasing
disconnect from nature, and probably mental fitness too.

I bought a hand-powered washing machine a while ago and it did the job fine
until it broke. Sadly, our culture doesn't promote great solutions that reduce
consumption. I'd be happy to wash my clothes under my own power and other
things like that if well-built ones were available. I can solve some things
myself, but it's a lot easier when solutions are on sale. There are thousands
of options for plug-in washing machines and only one or two hand or foot
powered.

I'd love to see people engineer solutions that work and endure. This article
isn't trying to solve all global power problems, but I bet its authors feel
something like Stallman when he started writing GNU utilities, which people
probably saw as tilting at windmills. Or even Torvalds writing the kernel,
though Stallman's platform made his project more plausible to help. By the
time people started Wikipedia, they could look back and build on several
successful models. Or maybe like Feynman considering how much room there was
at the bottom. Contemporaries probably said they were crazy and didn't see the
point.

I, for one, support people thinking along these lines and seeing how far they
can take us -- beyond engineering solutions to new ways of thinking about
ourselves in the context of nature. I bet a lot further than most of us
suspect.

~~~
jackmott
if you keep extending how little you can use the answer is obviously yes, but
then it isn't modern society. you could.more efficiently harness the sun than
growomg plants and eating them then working out anyway, so this whole approach
fails to make sense at any level.

------
King-Aaron
How much energy would that same human provide when dried, burned and used as
heat energy to power a turbine?

I mean, I ask for no other reason than curiosity.

~~~
frankus
About 70 kWh.

[https://what-if.xkcd.com/105/](https://what-if.xkcd.com/105/)

(Hey, you're the one that asked)

~~~
King-Aaron
There truly is an XKCD for everything

------
singularity2001
No

