MIT's D-Lab https://d-lab.mit.edu/research does a lot of similar work on fuels/cooking, evaporative cooling, and design with locally available materials/techniques

IMO, the wind turbine is way too complex to be actually useful. It's definitely not reproducible for $30 unless you have access to a junkyard.

The power drill required for it isn't especially low tech. A cheap used solar panel is a better solution in 95% of situations.

My wife came across the Jean Pain compost water heater recently, and I've been really intrigued by the idea. I haven't found a great compact design though, and most of the information I see online treats it more like a fun project than something that could be iterated on and refined. Would love to find somewhere to trade ideas on this and potentially replace some or all of gas water heater.

Here's a decent post about the idea: https://waldenlabs.com/compost-water-heaters-from-jean-pain/

Similar guy (though a more mysterious persona), and another noteworthy low-key web page: https://simplifier.neocities.org/

See also

- The astounding Low Tech Magazine https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/

- Appropriate Technologies wiki https://www.appropedia.org/

- Global Village Construction Kit https://www.opensourceecology.org/gvcs/ (blueprints for 50 open source technologies that are fundamental to civilization)

I love this project. I often lament how narrowly focused on tech/software open source tends to be. It is the most powerful example of human altruism that I can think of but it tends not to address a lot of peoples basic needs. I would love to see an open source house, car, bike, etc much more than I would like to see another solution for coordinating container clusters or something

(I know there are actually a few projects in the categories I mentioned but they are, largely, underwhelming)

I liked the aircraft carrier analogy. Some skills can only be preserved by practicing them repeatedly, not by outsourcing them. AI is an incredible tool, but we probably need to be more intentional about which parts of the creative process we hand over.

That looks rather primitive. I wonder whether the difference between low-tech and high-tech isn’t simply an aesthetic one. If the designs were adapted so that they no longer looked as they’d been designed by an anarcho-primitivist, would we still regard them as low-tech at all?

Excellent work. People here forget that "low tech" can be much more difficult than "high tech".

Reminds me of the book "The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind: Creating Currents of Electricity and Hope" by William Kamkwamba. Good read.