Thread by @JeffAndDonkeys

There is a word and concept which has a prominent place in conversation where I am listening. That word and concept is technology.
As I understand it, the term as used means specifically high energy high speed technology. I don't think it would be common to encounter my current

2. mental puzzling over how to build a belt driven, donkey powered, sickle bar hay / pasture mower being viewed as technology, let alone cutting edge technology.
Currently I listen a lot to people in the 30 to 45 age range, people now coming into their own as movers in the world.

3. My wife's heir, her family, are that generation. The #DoomerOptimist crowd here largely is in that group, and I follow them with interest.
But I'm seriously not trying to debate. I mean, I live in this world. Technology, as I say it is used, is virtually universal. What we do

4. with high speed data exchange technology is nothing short of miraculous, viewed from a 1900 perspective. I understand what this new thing is, and it's a power into itself, and there isn't really a word which can, in a satisfactory sense, encompass flaked stone knives and Web3.

5. So, technology it is.
I often encounter statements which, to me, could be paraphrased like this: Here's this tool, here's what it's for, here's how we can use that to further our goals."
I don't consider this to be a harsh assessment. Is it fair? #DO friends?

6. To me that is backward.
Here is how I think, we need to think:
"Here is our objective. By what minimum of energy can we get there?"
I think the very smallest, very least, that we can impose energy on Earth, is the best.
I am told again and again that there are too many of us.

7. Perhaps.
But for however many of us there are on Earth right now today, the less each of us take from it per day, the better the odds are it can keep up.
And right now it's not.
And everyone knows that. Don't we? I'm not out in left field here, am I? Worse every day, yes or no

8. Every day there is less topsoil, less available fresh water stored in aquifers, less available glacial water mass, less life in the ocean - everyone knows this.
So, if society had an objective, what would it be?
Please don't say, "Halt fossil fuels."
What do we work towards?

9. I think, and I make no bones about it, that the only hope we have as a race, Homo Industrialensis, Modern Human Inc, is to immediately begin to minimize our extraction, consumption, and reduction of the global ecosystem writ large, and to restore it as close to how it was,

10. with the handful of parts we have left. The ones we haven't already pissed away, driven into extinction, vanished, as we possibly can.
I think that at every single step we ought to be looking at how small a positive step we can make RIGHT NOW TODAY IN THE REAL WORLD,

11. and making that small positive step our own personal selves, and doing it with as little energy as we can possibly consume, as little material as we can possibly waste -
This is the principle behind permaculture. Principle 9: use small and slow solutions.

12. One assumed unquestionable good that "can be done" with fossil fuels is to go up high in watersheds and dig water catchment structures.
Why?
Virtually all the farm ponds in the United States when I was born were dug using horses, mules, donkeys, or cattle. The can walk up

13. The mountain, eat the fuel growing on the mountain, dig the ponds with slips held by human teamsters walking with the animals, no thing ever has to be paved and no fuel / energy shipped, poof all done, next pond.
This is how humans have done this for 6,000 years. It works.

14. So here's what I did: I went out and took some pictures of a pre-1904 cast iron one horse hay mower. Here's a video of this same model mower working.
It's pre-1904 because in 1904 Deering merged with McCormick and the brand name changed.

15. The wheels are about hip high on me. They roll at the animal's walking pace. The ring inside the wheel is a gear, internal teeth, next pic.

This is the wheel driven gear. I haven't counted, but will. First level input.

The ring gear drives this one. It's shielded, but the edges of the teeth are visible. First speed step-up, gives up applied force poundage, gains speed in return. Happens twice: two steps.

The little gear in the previous pic is on the outer (left side) end of this axle. it drives the big gear in the middle here, which drives the little one also visible, which extends down a shaft to the front of the machine.

Here's a close-up of the last gear.
Besides speed advantage, this mechanism has turned the direction of the force 90° - it came in on the wheel / axle, and it's going out forward from the driver. In front, a spinning wheel about the size of a saucer gives reciprocating motion.

The knife hasn't changed much in 120 years. I can still buy a new knife that will fit this mower, and have. Sorry about the weeds - our groundskeeper is slow.
This knife lays down to cut the grass. The cutter bar part is in the shed.

So, basically, you can do the drive uptake & gear ratio changes like this:

And I've got a cam arrangement that I can draw up and have the machine shop make for probably a hundred bucks, but I haven't drawn it so I can't show it to you - basically a wobble plate. Motion comes down the belt, and at the bottom you want the knife to go left and right.

I've got one of these, blown engine, and that 5 HP Briggs and Stratton engine made it mow and propel itself through the grass. I'd pretty much bet my girls can make this knife cut pasture grass. Move the pitman arm over to the edge. Belts and pulleys, two or three customer parts.

The question one asks strongly influences one's answer.
But I haven't made it yet, either.