The Amish attitude towards technology is a pretty good model of what an eventual Mars colony will need.

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.

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.

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.

>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.

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's like to be Amish. I still don't know much about Amish life and culture, but it'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'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 'progress'.

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 my favorite hard core Anabaptist sect, the Hutterites. Unlike th Amish, the Hutterites love 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.

They also live communally in farming colonies of about 80 people (half Dunbar'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/ religious/ pacifist local farmers; they were run out of South Dakota for their success combined with their pacifism in the early 20th Century.

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.

The ~1900 Hutterites are also famous among population theorist/ 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...).

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).

[1] http://www.hutterites.org/

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hutterite

[3] http://community.seattletimes.nwsource.com/archive/?date=200...

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

>There was actually an alternator system attempted in the last five years,” he says. “It worked about 60 percent, but it never took off.

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'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'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: http://www.popularmechanics.com/cars/technology/a24666/how-t...

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

Its all about self-sufficiency.

In the area I grew up, inflated rubber tires and bicycles were not allowed, but wooden tires on scooters were fine. Reason being, inflated tires made it too easy to travel far from home, which was generally discouraged.

So many people I grew up with seemed to think that Amish were being hypocritical by paying for taxi drivers to drive them around. That's an over-simplistic view. To an Amish community, taxi fees are a tariff intended to encourage finding a job close to home - or if at all possible - in your backyard. The ideal Amish are taught to strive for and desire is to have a farm and provide for your family with your hands.

Here is a great documentary about an Amish couple that gave the rare opportunity to be filmed and interviewed. It's not about the Amish that I grew up with, however their flavor of Amishness is philosophically equivalent https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HtNXvE_rLoE

I don't have the citation handy, but one fun fact is that this has basically shaken out by "natural selection" if you will - there used to be Amish communities that were fine with modern travel and personal ownership of cars... but all such Amish communities basically disintegrated into the larger culture. The ones that are left are the ones that picked technology policies that allowed them to absorb benefits from modern technology without fundamentally disrupting their culture.

You might enjoy the article "Amish Hackers" [1], which looks in more detail at the Amish approach to technology.

It has been discussed a few times here on HN [2].

[1] http://kk.org/thetechnium/amish-hackers-a/

[2] https://hn.algolia.com/?query=Amish%20Hackers&sort=byDate&da...

I find it's also easy to fall into the trap of attributing more cohesion than there is and simplifying all of the groups into some sort of average. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amish#Use_of_technology_by_dif...

You should see some videos of Amish woodworking shops. They have every tool that a modern woodworking shop would have: table saw, bandsaw, drill press, rotary sanders, etc.

Except they are all air powered. They have all been rigged to run off pressurized air lines. The air is produced by a gas generator.

Every community seems to be different. Different sets of rules.

In the town where I grew up there are Mennonites, and now more Amish people. Apparently - the reason they don't use electricity from the grid, is because it's possibly made on 'Sunday' - ergo - they can't use it.

They all have generators to make electricity for their barns, equipment etc..

No electricity to the houses though.

There are lots of different sects with different rules. Also, there are lots of them that have generators creating electricity but they unplug it if the church elders come for a visit.

Cars give freedom to those who don't have it. It's easy to have a rosy pastoral view of the Amish, but the reality is grim for many young women subjugated to that culture. The ability for such people to see that the outside world can be far less harsh than the one they are used to will necessarily (and in my opinion should) lead to the collapse of those communities.

>In fact, technology does not improve the human condition in most cases. It erodes it.

I agree with what you said but think this is a little strong of a statement. I guess it depends on what you mean by technology. I'd rather live today than in the 1900s because of medical technology alone.

It's like anything. Technology just is. It's what people with free will do with it that can be harmful or helpful.

With that said, I agree we should be more diligent to at least be aware of how technology is affecting us personally, then act accordingly.

I don't think so. It's more like - a lot of technologies help you join bigger communities, in particular the Universal Culture[0]. If your community is defined mostly by not being part of universal culture, technology becomes an existential threat to it.

--

[0] - defined as the culture that outcompetes other cultures; often called "Western culture", but it's not really important where it came from. McDonalds, for instance, is part of universal culture, but it wins not because it's from America; it wins because people find it to be actually a pretty good idea.

I knew rural BC was an outpost for Mormon offshoots that still polygamy, but this is actually much cooler. It's weird I've never run into any, I spend a lot of time in eastern washington.

> English variants of Anabaptism (Quakers, etc),

It's important that you know that Quakers aren't Anabaptists[0].

They hold the "peace church" thing in common, and have both essentially fallen out of consort with mainline Protestantism, but that's about it.

[0]http://www.quakerinfo.org/index

Very interesting. I live in Pullman, WA. They have a colony in Spokane. I'm curious now.

Minor point, but you meant 'cost of living', I believe.

By "moved west" I presume you just mean farther west into the state, rather than the west coast? I'm from near Mercer, PA and I haven't noticed any decline in the number of buggies on the roads near there.

> no car payments

The article quotes ~$8,000 for a new buggy, plus a horse which although they produce themselves has to be fed and cared for. That to me sounds in the ballpark of the cost of owning a decent used car.