I think I got lured in when techbros had some credibility, and I hoped to learn enough to participate in creating technological solutions to remediate ecological destruction - renewable energy, e-mobility, … I was an adult student who had half of her licenciatura in EE done (like bachelors I think?), then Covid hit and it was the perfect excuse to give up university and spend some time considering the doubts that had been building up.
All the hard science just didn’t add up. Somewhere in my thermodynamics semester it just started to dawn on me that a lot of the so called technological solutions were just greenwashing bullshit while we were still celebrating endless growth, endless innovation and endless consumerist bliss. The big picture was still missing, and any ethical or philosophical training was entirely missing from the curriculum, so you have all these clever youngsters being trained to earn good money in tech and never spend a single thought about the larger implications of their activities.
I’ve simplified my life. I work as a technical translator - like I did before studying EE. My brain wouldn’t do complicated stuff for a long while, and as this capacity grows back slowly I try to put it to good use in small scall permaculture - I tinker with ram pumps and electric fence. I’ve took my drone out the other day to see if it could be used for searching lost animals in the mountains (happens often where I live), it’s too much of a fire risk this time of the year though. Solar cooking and heating is another field where I’ve done some stuff and want to do more.
I also try to figure out where using tech is useless, especially on the farm. Transporting stuff for example can be reduced to a minimum. Often the laziest method wins. We don’t bring the food to the animals but the animals to the food. We compost things in place whenever we can. We use animals for land clearing, fertilizing, weeding, removing pests. A lot of this can also be applied to non-farm life. I plan to document as much as I can, so I guess I’m in research, popular research.
I think I got lured in when techbros had some credibility, and I hoped to learn enough to participate in creating technological solutions to remediate ecological destruction - renewable energy, e-mobility, … I was an adult student who had half of her licenciatura in EE done (like bachelors I think?), then Covid hit and it was the perfect excuse to give up university and spend some time considering the doubts that had been building up.
All the hard science just didn’t add up. Somewhere in my thermodynamics semester it just started to dawn on me that a lot of the so called technological solutions were just greenwashing bullshit while we were still celebrating endless growth, endless innovation and endless consumerist bliss. The big picture was still missing, and any ethical or philosophical training was entirely missing from the curriculum, so you have all these clever youngsters being trained to earn good money in tech and never spend a single thought about the larger implications of their activities.
I’ve simplified my life. I work as a technical translator - like I did before studying EE. My brain wouldn’t do complicated stuff for a long while, and as this capacity grows back slowly I try to put it to good use in small scall permaculture - I tinker with ram pumps and electric fence. I’ve took my drone out the other day to see if it could be used for searching lost animals in the mountains (happens often where I live), it’s too much of a fire risk this time of the year though. Solar cooking and heating is another field where I’ve done some stuff and want to do more.
I also try to figure out where using tech is useless, especially on the farm. Transporting stuff for example can be reduced to a minimum. Often the laziest method wins. We don’t bring the food to the animals but the animals to the food. We compost things in place whenever we can. We use animals for land clearing, fertilizing, weeding, removing pests. A lot of this can also be applied to non-farm life. I plan to document as much as I can, so I guess I’m in research, popular research.