this post was submitted on 11 Oct 2023
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Solarpunk technology

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Technology for a Solar-Punk future.

Airships and hydroponic farms...

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[–] [email protected] 34 points 1 year ago (3 children)

I learnt about graceful degradation in relation to escalators and how they compare to elevators/lifts. Basically escalators become stairs, whereas lifts become cages.

It's been one of my favourite design concepts, alongside hidden design (design which improves things without being apparent/in your face about it)

Also, as mentioned elsewhere in this thread, it's unrelated to planned obsolescence as in it's not about designing things to last, but for a design to be functional even if there's some issue outside the control of the product design. You can get graceful degradation along with planned obsolescence, they're not mutually exclusive.

Reminds me of the differences in design cultures in different companies, though I heard it in relation to countries but idk if that was a stereotype or not. What I heard was about differences in design philosophies towards a similar goal of a good product: one company over engineered their stuff to last a long time, whereas the other company relied on redundancy by putting in a second of anything that was likely to fail in parallel to the original.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Sometimes escalators also become meat grinders though. Less graceful.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

Just put your choice of meat on it, still graceful /s

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

Meat grinding is still functionality

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Escalators are usually not safe to use when broken. So this is a good example of the idea in a spherical cow sort of way, but not practically.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I forgot to mention this was in relation to the lack of electricity, not breaking down

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago

That does change things lol.