What Is Solar Punk? A Creative Commons Solar Punk Manifesto
re-des.org
re-des.org
The solar punk fiction i've encountered always seemed kind of boring. It felt like wishful thinking.
Utopian fiction can be interesting, but usually it is most interesting when it investigates what happens when something rocks the boat. When i think of star trek or the culture, i think of stories where they encounter a challenge to the utopian life, and they need to find someway to overcome it without sacraficing ideals.
The solarpunk works i have read (perhaps i just haven't read enough examples) felt more along the lines of - what if everyone suddenly decided to set aside our differences, live in peace and protect the planet. Like yes that would be nice, but the book has to say something interesting about that to be interesting.
People probably come and go on low-resitance bikes and private EVs, not on sushi-packed elevators and public transportation; common buildings would be at most 4-stories tall, not 120 average; no weekly downpours, let alone biannual thunderstorms demolishing houses; etc.
PV installations require large, flat, open, dry, unused land that don't support any residential or agricultural needs, abundant and readily available, easily proportionate to population density. Off-grid care-free lifestyles inherently require massive private property, and therefore sparsity of living, while habitable land is a scarce resource in most parts on this planet, developed or not.
There's a list of countries/regions by population density on Wikipedia[1]. It can be eye opening.
According to that list, Hong Kong has density of 6,725 person/sqkm. Meanwhile, yearly solar panel power production on Earth somewhere between 500G to 1TWh per sqkm. (1TWh / (365*6725)) = 400 Wh/person/day. You're not showering every day with that amount. But that's extreme, so let's see, it's 233 person/sqkm in Qatar, which translates to 11kWh/day allotment, which might be enough for personal EVs if they covered the entire land from border to border with solar panels.
I think it's worth mentioning sometimes, that "buy a rural house and put up some PV" lifestyle, and Sci-Fi novels based on it by extension, isn't something scalable out to current 8b population of Earth, but it's something that rely on either ultradense megalopolis to secure and contain working classes, or American abundance of land.
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_dependen...
I also get an off-the-grid vibe when I read about solarpunk. But 1) just because it doesn’t scale at our population doesn’t mean it isn’t worth pursuing, 2) I get a little post-apocalyptic silver lining mentality from this movement, too, which would imply a population collapse in its aesthetic.
Large, flat, otherwise unused land areas do seem ideal for deploying solar panels. I don’t see that as prerequisite, as you can strap them onto buildings, and you can have them on fields above farm animals. Although I would agree that the economics don’t necessarily add up for a large population 100% solar scenario; gridlock economy, finding enough space for panels in an urban environment.
There are a few words that I do not understand what they mean (perhaps I will look in Wikipedia later), but other than that I think it look like good ideas (although in some cases, some nuances may be helpful).
So, yes actually, it does seem like that would fit in their manifesto.
As an aside, if it was actually static - just apache serving a .html file on a server somewhere, i suspect it would still be up :)
There is simpler protocols (probably the "nex:" is simplest kind of "small web" protocols), simpler file formats, simpler ways to use existing file formats, and more efficient server software, available, too.
I had also invented "hashed:" URI scheme (which is documented together with the specifiction of Scorpion protocol/file-format, but can also be used independently) to include the hash of the file in the URL (which can sometimes allow detection if the spies or the server operator will alter the contents of the file, and can also allow the hash to be known in case you are able to find the same file from other sources in case one source is unavailable).
However, other people can make a copy of Solar Punk Manifesto; it is CC-BY-SA.
My main point was mostly just that contrary to what the person i was responding to implied, self-hosting static content is a totally reasonable thing to do and a very easy thing to performance optimize (basically just do nothing). An actually self-hosted static site (apache + html, css, js) would have probably stood up to the hn hug of death.
> I had also invented "hashed:" URI scheme
"Invent" is a strong word given magnet: links have been around forever.
I agree that self-hosting static content is a reasonable thing to do, and would be a good idea.
However, reducing the number of files and file sizes still makes it more efficient, and so does using simpler server software (which is possible for HTTP, although it can be even more simpler with some other protocols if the server software is also simpler).
> magnet: links have been around forever.
I know about magnet: URI scheme, although mine is somewhat simpler (it is not intended to do everything that magnet: does), but also allows relative URLs (although supporting this involves things other than the usual URL format), and does not require URL encoding, and has some other differences. (Unlike the magnet: scheme, it is not intended to use with BitTorrent; it is intended for documents like other URI schemes are.)
("Forever" is a strong word; magnet: scheme was invented in 2002, according to Wikipedia.)