My good mate Pip Jones put me onto this other example of how we are returning to old tech as we head towards the end of the oil age. This time its sail technologies propelling the global fleet of cargo tankers. So simple you really have to ask why we haven’t done it yet. The answer of course, oil was too cheap, the costs externalised for past generations (of all species) to pay. Well that’s changing as the pay by date races rapidly forward towards the current generation’s lifetimes.
So sails are back, now to stop those cargo ships carrying tons of consumer junk and coal on them!
This and the post before it reminds me that I often get asked why the agency is called Digital Eskimo. Well in part it is derived from the meeting of modern thinking and technology with the elegant, beautiful and sustainable ideas of the older cultures. I love that this is happening all around us now. We strive to implement this ideal through the agency (most recently we’ve begun to prototype our desk blankets based on the old tradition of placing a blanket around the family dinner table and heating it from underneath (most famously employed in Japan but widely implemented elsewhere i believe). More about that later!
