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Human powered electricity generation is not the newest of ideas. As relates Webber Energy Blog here, it has already been implemented in fitness centers in California and Hon Kong. A similar idea has been set up by  a British night club owner with a dancefloor producing electricity. But why not expand this idea to smaller and even more everyday actions and use it to power devices at the same scale. I’m thinking of these automatic watches, for instance, that mechanically store hand and wrist movement to run: they, too, already exist. Now what if, for example, you implemented this kind of pendulum energy collectors into trousers and jackets. The collected electric energy could be stored in sewn-in batteries and/or be directly used to recharge all those devices we also love to carry around: mobile phones, pods, CD-players, GPS, playstations etc. Considering all the energy wasted by traditional wall-plugged current converters, this could mean quite a step for planet care. A step, too, perhaps, for public health: If you have to move around a little more to get that pod running, you might have just the bit of necessary motivation to do so…

Now, one could consider another option: not an energy producing but an energy saving suit. Today’s technology allows for very optimal thermal isolation. Of course, hi-end material is highly expensive but imagine all the savings one could make if, instead of heating a house interior to 20°C, one would only keep it at 5°C and compensate by an skin-adhesive thermosuit, even at home and in the office. Imagine highway patrol wearing these suits instead of keeping the motor running to keep warm (yes they really do this in the US, I’ve seen on a motorway near Boston).

And now, think one step further and combine both ideas: a discrete skin-adhesive energy suit collecting thermoregulating the body while collecting heat and movement energy wherever possible. Take a walk and your laptop will keep running in the middle of nowhere.

Any implementation suggestions or profound reasons why all this is really just unreasonable gibberish and cheap science-fiction? Feel free to write so.

A couple of days ago, we’ve climbed on top of the Duomo of Milano. One of the most amazing features of Gothic structures like this are really is the way it treats rain water flow.The water, which falls on the vast surface of the roof, is first led to the sides, and then collected in such a way as to flow along the top of the magnificently decorated arc-boutants (flying buttresses), down to the pinnacles. It then flows though each pinnacle and is spat out, on the other side, by a gargoyle, upon the top of a smaller side-roof, and so on, by the mouths of other gargoyles down to the Piazza del Duomo.

Now this is a way to build meaning out of an everyday phenomena: here, rain water is made to participate to the dynamic structure of the gargoyles, which symbolically protect the church (i.e. the christian community) by spitting out God’s wrath on everything evil (doing so, they also accomplish something that the Greeks have called “catharsis“). At the same time, they participate to the simple sheltering function of the cathedral, by limiting the abrasive effect of rain water on its mineral structure.

And there is another thing: the roof of this cathedral is accessible and it obviously has been since it was build. It is difficult to prove this assertion from medieval written sources but the very comfortable stone stairway leading way up to there speaks for itself. Walking on the roof, you can see these gargoyles, and many other things that inspire a bodily sense of meaning, like the statues of many catholic saints, which, from the Piazza del Duomo, seem floating in the sky, but which, from the roof, can be seen as floating over the city of Milan, keeping a caring eye on its inhabitants. Looking at them from way up there, you experience a vertigo which could not be transmitted by written text.

The Duomo, to anyone who has access to its roof, thus works pretty much like a Zen garden: it is a factory of meaning whose every structural detail allows you to make a bodily experience of a transcendental reality. In this, it accomplishes a role similar to that of its interior, of which Yi Fu Tuan (Topophilia, 1974) has said:

“It involves sight, sound, touch and smell. Each sense reinforces the other so that together they clarify the structure and substance of the entire building, revealing its essential character.”

And by letting you experience this, helps you to produce meaning which you can inject into society by your spoken word. And this is precisely how we can imagine medieval priests used structures like these.

But the Duomo (and from here comes its factory status) does not have to be reserved to priests. It is so huge that hundreds of people can climb on the top of it or stroll inside. And while the interior allows for rituals and introspection, its roof allows for reflection on society and its relation with a transcendental meaning (notwithstanding the this-worldedness or other-worldedness of this transcendentality).

The Duomo isn’t the only example of this. The Sagrada Familia in Barcelona produces a much similar effect, only that here, the pervasive element is air, which howls and whistles as you turn round and crawl through corridors and stairways which lead you from tower to tower.

But there is a new element out of which you can build and that Aristotle has somehow omitted from his list: information.  If you have ever read Uberto Eco’s “Name of the Rose” or Borgès’ “La biblioteca de Babel” (in Ficciones), chances ares you’ve lived a similar exaltation of knowledge only while walking through the described constructs.

But information isn’t confined to text since twenty years. So now, what about you building such a factory of meaning in cyberspace?

Lately, I noticed again a couple of car wrecks being torn apart to iron plates on the top of some wagon. A week after that, a mechanic changed the car battery of our old VW Golf. Seeing him making that, I thought:

“Hell, this old thing is still running. The only thing it was missing is a new battery. Sure, it consumes way too much gas, in comparison with more recent machines, but why would we buy a new one?”

Some car makers really try to sell you new models with pretense of environmental concern, but a new bodywork (the french say “carrosserie”), with seats, tires, plastic interior, gears, and who knows what else… has to be made: and the fabrication of those things actually costs gas energy, too.

The thing someone should really come up with is a plug-in motor:

The plugin motor is sold in separate parts, which can be connected to each other in such a way as to be able to plug the motor into any bodywork. When new technologies arise, you should not have to buy a new car, but simply replace your motor, or parts of it, as long as the bodywork is good.

All its parts should be worldwide ISO certified, so they can connect to each other in any combination. A car upgrade could then be comparable to what is done with software: you don’t throw your machine away, but only upgrade the OS, or little parts of it.

Just imagine your beautiful Chevy or vintage Trabant with the latest Japanese “Hybrid Inside”. Or an elctromotor, or whatever this civilization will have to come up with in the next thirty years.

Last but not least, the use of plug-in motors  provide local jobs to many people. Many mechanics would be needed to produce custom motors and motor upgrades on a regular basis. Garage work would become more creative. And people would be able to pay these new generation mechanics by all the money not spent on buying whole new cars. As opposed to car production, plugin motor upgrading has to be done locally and therefore cannot be delocalized: the jobs it provides are thus sustainable.

Is this feasible? Please post any drawings, links to similar projects or objections.

Image: from Flickr by: Paleontour, may 2008, Creative Commons BY