Modern Tech inside an Amish Horse-Drawn Buggy

The Amish attitude towards technology is a pretty good model of what an eventual Mars colony will need.<p>When (or if) people finally travel to Mars to stay, the biggest risk to the colony will be being dependent on imports from Earth. It will always be expensive to send ships from Earth to Mars, so it is folly to assume that resupply missions will continue indefinitely. So a colony which hopes to be viable must be vigilant not to be too dependent on outside goods.<p>This is the same as the Amish attitude. Every item from outside is regarded as suspicious; it MUST be rejected if it produces a dependency on the outside. Best if it can be made inside the community; perhaps acceptable if it can be repaired and used indefinitely even if it only comes from outside.<p>So a Mars colony will evaluate imports. Anything that can be made locally on Mars is best; things which can be repaired and reused indefinitely are okay; things which increase the dependency on the outside world will be shunned.

&gt;Despite what you may have heard, the Amish aren’t against technology. Communities adopt new gadgets such as fax machines and business-use cellphones all the time—as long as the local church approves each one ahead of time, determining that it won’t drastically change their way of life.<p>This alone is the most interesting point of the article. People not belonging to the community, like myself, have a fixed preconceived notion of what it&#x27;s like to be Amish. I still don&#x27;t know much about Amish life and culture, but it&#x27;s fascinating to see where my assumptions are wrong (and what else I may be wrong about!)

A lot of people think the Amish are against technology. In fact, they carefully consider the technology&#x27;s effect on themselves and their community. Will it really help, or is it just a new thing which will cause unintended consequences? For instance, some Amish groups accepted cars, and their community disappeared - when anyone can drive anywhere the community collapsed. Now there are no Amish who allow cars. The same thing would happen with the internet. Tech people like ourselves automatically assume that technology is some advance, or improvement. Our peers tell us this, our incomes depend on us believing this. In fact, technology does not improve the human condition in most cases. It erodes it. We would be better making careful decisions like the Amish, but our civilisation is locked onto this myth of &#x27;progress&#x27;.<p>Technology should be for us, not the other way around. Unlike the Amish, we put the cart before the horse.

Whenever a discussion of Amish comes up, I have to link to <i>my</i> favorite hard core Anabaptist sect, the Hutterites. Unlike th Amish, the Hutterites <i>love</i> technology. They choose what technology to use as part of a very strict church system, like the Amish, but are very much into diesel engines and the internet and the like (note the link below). See [1] and [2] below.<p>They also live communally in farming colonies of about 80 people (half Dunbar&#x27;s number) in very remote parts of Western Canada and the Northwestern US. Historically, the Hutterites have pissed off the local non-Hutterite farmers because the colonies are successful and can buy up local land from the non-communal&#x2F; religious&#x2F; pacifist local farmers; they were run out of South Dakota for their success combined with their pacifism in the early 20th Century.<p>They are pacifist, just like all Anabaptists (Mennonite, Amish, etc). Unlike English variants of Anabaptism (Quakers, etc), Hutterites and other German derived sects drink quite a bit of alcohol, I think. I think they have a great a-capella singing ritual tradition. I bet their food is great, too. I heard they like hockey.<p>The ~1900 Hutterites are also famous among population theorist&#x2F; demographers because their historical data provided the baseline of the highest possible, yet realistic, human fertility society. They married early (probably with quasi-arranged marriages), had lots of babies (much cheaper to raise in a communal setting), were healthy with relatively low mortality, and kept great records (German heritage...).<p>They are very much a going concern today, continuing to found new colonies even a few years ago, one in Oregon 14 years ago [3] below. I have always wanted to visit a colony, but I live in the urban Puget Sound and the closest colony is about 3.5 hour drive away. I have read that they are quite welcoming, as long as you are quite respectful in return (a fair trade, to my mind).<p>[1] <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.hutterites.org&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.hutterites.org&#x2F;</a><p>[2] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Hutterite" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Hutterite</a><p>[3] <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;community.seattletimes.nwsource.com&#x2F;archive&#x2F;?date=20030308&amp;slug=hutterites08" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;community.seattletimes.nwsource.com&#x2F;archive&#x2F;?date=200...</a>

Buggies are the original self driving vehicles. Many stories about drunk guys getting into their buggies alone, falling asleep, and waking up at home!

&gt;There was actually an alternator system attempted in the last five years,” he says. “It worked about 60 percent, but it never took off.<p>Generator hubs for bicycles are mature technology at this point. Including capacitors in the taillights so they stay on when the bike is stopped. Buggies could easily adopt them, but I guess it&#x27;s not worth the bother if batteries mostly work.

My state has cut rumble strips down the middle of many roads. The Amish are up early and travelling around on Sundays in buggies on the shoulders. It use to be easy to give them room; no traffic that early so you swing out across the line and keep away from the horse. Now if you do that you hit the rumble strip and the horse will panic; rear up and try to see what terrible thing is coming up from behind.

When I worked for a Wal-Mart in Indiana in the 90s, the Amish would come into the electronics department and buy country music cassettes and battery-powered players. And also, I kid you not, Gameboys.

How do Amish people generally make money? I know there are markets that sell Amish goods to non-Amish, but there must be more to their income than that.

The Amish are a very interesting people, I respect them very much. I wouldn&#x27;t want to live that way, but you have to have some admiration for people who can hold on to their principles like that in the face of modern conveniences.

Original link: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.popularmechanics.com&#x2F;cars&#x2F;technology&#x2F;a24666&#x2F;how-the-amish-build-a-buggy&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.popularmechanics.com&#x2F;cars&#x2F;technology&#x2F;a24666&#x2F;how-t...</a>

All this tech, and no pictures of them anywhere in the article.

Its all about self-sufficiency.