Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production of I Heart Radios,
Speaker 1: How Stuff Works. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff.
Speaker 1: I'm your host job in Strickland. I'm an executive producer
Speaker 1: with How Stuff Works and I heart Radio and I
Speaker 1: love all things tech. And In this classic episode of
Speaker 1: tech Stuff, which originally published on August twenty second, two twelve,
Speaker 1: Chris Palette and I talk about repurposing technology for developing countries,
Speaker 1: taking technology that might be considered outdated here in the
Speaker 1: United States and in other parts of the world, and
Speaker 1: then making sure that that technology, with the proper support,
Speaker 1: goes to places where it can do an enormous amount
Speaker 1: of good. I find this particular topic pretty inspirational when
Speaker 1: it is done properly. Obviously, you can do this in
Speaker 1: a way that can cause no good at all, or
Speaker 1: maybe even cause harm if done irresponsibly. But we'll get
Speaker 1: into all of that. So let's sit back, relax and
Speaker 1: enjoy this classic episode. We're gonna talk about something that's
Speaker 1: really kind of a a humanitarian sort of approach to hacking.
Speaker 1: But before we really get into it, I wanted to
Speaker 1: read something. It's a little listener mail. This is actual
Speaker 1: listener mail. I have it in front of me. It's
Speaker 1: on real paper and everything. What kind of strange technology
Speaker 1: is that I know? Not? It confuses and frightens me.
Speaker 1: It's like it's appearing on a screen, but it's on
Speaker 1: an actual physical sheet of paper. Who's it is? But
Speaker 1: only because there's a lamp behind the letter that I'm reading.
Speaker 1: This is a letter that we received from our super fan,
Speaker 1: Adam Pervez, who actually has sent stuff to lots of
Speaker 1: our podcast He's a big fan of How Stuff Works
Speaker 1: podcasts in general. And if you guys have been to
Speaker 1: our Facebook page, you may have seen a picture Chris
Speaker 1: and I were sporting a pair of alpaca wool hats,
Speaker 1: and these are hats that he picked up while he
Speaker 1: was doing something he calls the happiness plunge. Packers are keen. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so the happiness plunges. This idea he had where he
Speaker 1: decided he wanted to really follow his dreams and try
Speaker 1: to make the world a better place than it was
Speaker 1: when he got there. And so the idea is that
Speaker 1: he quit his job and he started traveling through the
Speaker 1: world really but mostly through Latin America when he started,
Speaker 1: and trying to help different communities as he traveled from
Speaker 1: place to place, he would listen to the house Stuff
Speaker 1: Works podcasts in between those places. Well, I wanted to
Speaker 1: read a paragraph from this letter. It's actually a fairly
Speaker 1: long letter, so I'm not gonna read the whole thing,
Speaker 1: but here's the paragraph. My goal is a travelers to
Speaker 1: leave each place better than how I found it, which
Speaker 1: I do by volunteering everywhere I go. I've had volunteering
Speaker 1: experiences such as feeding the elderly at a nursing home
Speaker 1: in Mexico, installing solar panels in rural Honduras, attracting book
Speaker 1: donations for a rural library project in Peru, playing with
Speaker 1: kids at orphanages in Costa Rica and Ecuador, designing a
Speaker 1: financing strategy for a new NGO and El Salvador, and
Speaker 1: marketing an organization that turns donated used bikes into bike machines,
Speaker 1: washing machines, blenders, water well pumps, etcetera in Guatemala. There's
Speaker 1: a lot I can offer as an engineer slash NBA
Speaker 1: and there's more to the letter than that, but that's
Speaker 1: kind of what gave us the idea for this podcast.
Speaker 1: We wanted to talk about technology that people have taken
Speaker 1: and repurposed to benefit people who are in developing nations
Speaker 1: who don't have access to the same level of technology
Speaker 1: we do. And in fact, if we were to give
Speaker 1: those people the technology that we take for granted every day,
Speaker 1: it would not necessarily be helpful because their conditions, their
Speaker 1: day to day conditions are so vastly different from the
Speaker 1: ones we are used to that they would not necessarily
Speaker 1: be able to take advantage of that tech. So they're
Speaker 1: actually taking kind of a lower tech approach by repurposing
Speaker 1: stuff that was never meant to do the things that
Speaker 1: it now does. And we thought, what a cool idea,
Speaker 1: So we want to kind of get into that and
Speaker 1: sort of talk about the different ways people have tried
Speaker 1: to to uh accomplish this and uh, I'm sorry you're
Speaker 1: gonna say something, well, I was gonna say that. Uh
Speaker 1: and in some of these places, uh, you know, these
Speaker 1: are the places where, for example, cell phones have really
Speaker 1: vaulted over land lines because a lot of a lot
Speaker 1: of areas have not ever been wired for landline telephone used. So, um,
Speaker 1: you know now that uh cell phone talk technology is
Speaker 1: so inexpensive, I mean just the basic phone technology. Um,
Speaker 1: and you know, many people in places such as uh,
Speaker 1: you know Africa for example. UM, more of the rural areas. UM.
Speaker 1: You know, really it's a an urban versus rural thing anyway.
Speaker 1: But but um, yeah, a lot of more the rural
Speaker 1: places where or places that are more removed where there's
Speaker 1: a lot of distance in between that area and an
Speaker 1: urban area. UM. Uh cell phone usage. You know, it's
Speaker 1: easier to put up the towers than it is to
Speaker 1: wire those places for landlines. So um you know that
Speaker 1: In doing research for other podcasts where we've talked about phones. UM,
Speaker 1: I've just run across stories what they've said, Well, you know,
Speaker 1: cell phone usage per capita maybe higher in some of
Speaker 1: these other places, simply because everybody's got a cell phone.
Speaker 1: They never had a landline phone. Right, it's now that
Speaker 1: they dropped one for the other. It's that they completely
Speaker 1: leap frogged. Yeah, and and and and the play and
Speaker 1: some of these inventions that we're going to talk about
Speaker 1: um or these technologies. Uh, they may not necessarily have
Speaker 1: uh for example, electricity seven, but they might be able
Speaker 1: to repurpose some of these other things uh inexpensively to
Speaker 1: improve their lives through this other technology. And it is
Speaker 1: a lot of it is very inventive. I actually saw
Speaker 1: Apollo thirteen invoked in one of the articles that I
Speaker 1: was searching for because, um, if you know the story
Speaker 1: that was the mission where um, they the astronauts had serious,
Speaker 1: serious problem because they're some of the technology failed, um
Speaker 1: and they had to come up with other stuff on
Speaker 1: the fly. I know that was actually the uh, the
Speaker 1: genesis of the idea for the TV show Scrap Peep Challenge,
Speaker 1: which in the United States was Junkyard Wars, where you
Speaker 1: had to just throw some other stuff together and had
Speaker 1: sort of this the same idea you would you would
Speaker 1: you would go through a junkyard and you would salvage
Speaker 1: different machines in order to build something that was specifically
Speaker 1: intended to achieve a a particular goal which was established
Speaker 1: at the beginning of the show. So you would have
Speaker 1: a goal like it might be traversed this this landscape here,
Speaker 1: and you're going to have to be able to go up,
Speaker 1: you know, a twenty degree incline, and there's going to
Speaker 1: be a section that's gonna be rocky, and there might
Speaker 1: even be a section where you have to travel across water.
Speaker 1: So you have to build a machine that's capable capable
Speaker 1: of doing all those things, but all you have is
Speaker 1: whatever is in this junkyard. Yeah, and of course they
Speaker 1: did up mids TV, so they'd end up seeding the
Speaker 1: junkyard a handful of necessary parts. But is if nobody ever,
Speaker 1: you know, they don't know everything that's in the junkyard,
Speaker 1: I'm sure they go, well, it turns out that there
Speaker 1: isn't any of this stuff and we're kind of stuck.
Speaker 1: So it would make it would not make for interesting television,
Speaker 1: so they would they would put in things in there.
Speaker 1: But here's the thing is that people are really inventive, right,
Speaker 1: and they can come up with solutions that you do
Speaker 1: not anticipate. So even if you were to seed a
Speaker 1: junkyard with things that you think, oh, well, clearly, they'll
Speaker 1: want to build a device that can do this by
Speaker 1: using this, this, and this, it may turn out that
Speaker 1: they end up getting stuff that you did not see
Speaker 1: that junkyard with and they build something that works, you know,
Speaker 1: as well or perhaps even better than what you had
Speaker 1: conceived of when you were seating it. Because people adapt
Speaker 1: to the situation they are in, and they are very
Speaker 1: quick to adapt their technology as well. And in fact,
Speaker 1: we have seen that in developing nations, and a lot
Speaker 1: of the projects we're gonna be talking about kind of
Speaker 1: they didn't start this process. They just saw something that
Speaker 1: was happening and decided to help it along. Uh. And
Speaker 1: there are a couple of organizations I want to mention
Speaker 1: before we even get into specifics. One of those is
Speaker 1: called Random Hacks of Kindness and another is called Geeks
Speaker 1: Without Bounds, And both of these organizations are dedicated to
Speaker 1: helping developing nations through various hack projects. Although and both
Speaker 1: of those cases, they are more focused on the software
Speaker 1: side of things. So, like you were saying, you know,
Speaker 1: cell phone use being much more prevalent than landline use.
Speaker 1: A lot of these involve apps for phones that would
Speaker 1: alert people to things that affect them in their daily lives. Um,
Speaker 1: and things that other people just wouldn't think of because
Speaker 1: it's not something that affects us, right, So a lot
Speaker 1: of these are programs that would not that that are
Speaker 1: again on that software side, that are not about hardware hacks.
Speaker 1: We're really focusing mostly on hardware hacks today, although some
Speaker 1: other stuff might pop up to yeah, this is um.
Speaker 1: Also keep in mind that a lot of the technology
Speaker 1: that that can be used for ther you know, it's
Speaker 1: perfectly good technology. Um, you know, we're not talking necessarily
Speaker 1: about junk. Although it might be things that other people
Speaker 1: have cast off as being obsolete. In some cases it's
Speaker 1: you know, completely functional and uh you know, there's there's
Speaker 1: no reason to overdo it. Yeah, there's some cases where
Speaker 1: it's not even repurposing in the sense of making something
Speaker 1: do something it wasn't meant to do, like repurposing, just
Speaker 1: as in reusing. So there are a lot of these
Speaker 1: programs that allow you to do things like donate your
Speaker 1: old electronics to various programs, so like old computers are.
Speaker 1: That's the perfect example. It might be a computer that
Speaker 1: you think is obsolete because it can't run the latest
Speaker 1: stuff that you like to run, but for a developing nation,
Speaker 1: it might be a very useful asset. But we're really
Speaker 1: looking at in this podcast technology that's been turned into
Speaker 1: doing something else. And I was going to start with
Speaker 1: Maya Pedal and Maya All I'm I'm assuming that's the
Speaker 1: organization that Adam was talking about in his letter, because
Speaker 1: Maya Pedal is the is a Guatemalan organization that takes
Speaker 1: donated bikes, mainly donated from the United States and from Canada,
Speaker 1: and they take those bikes to either recondition them and
Speaker 1: sell them or they use the parts to build what
Speaker 1: they call and I'm going to completely butcher the pronunciation
Speaker 1: of this biking mackinas or bike powered machines pedal powered machines.
Speaker 1: And so what they're doing is they're actually taking these
Speaker 1: bikes apart to some extent, and using that pedal power.
Speaker 1: So instead of it turning a wheel, it's turning some
Speaker 1: other mechanical part to accomplish a task that they might
Speaker 1: otherwise not have a mechanical opportunity to to address it,
Speaker 1: like things like and then simple stuff you know, Adam
Speaker 1: and mentioned things like a washing machine. Well that's a
Speaker 1: that's a perfect example. You've got a big tub that
Speaker 1: you put the water in, the soap in, the clothing in,
Speaker 1: and you have an agitator in there, something that turns
Speaker 1: around and moves the clothing so that it creates this
Speaker 1: agitation which will help the soap and water work out
Speaker 1: all the soil and everything else that's in the clothing.
Speaker 1: You have that agitator hooked up through a series of
Speaker 1: of gears and chains or belts to a pedal system
Speaker 1: on a bike, and it might even have the back
Speaker 1: half of the bike more or less intact, where you've
Speaker 1: got the seat and everything, and you sit down the seat,
Speaker 1: you pedal the petals, it turns the agitator and it
Speaker 1: ends up washing clothing that way. There's actually a guy
Speaker 1: in Texas who had um a blog. The last entry
Speaker 1: I saw was in two but there was a guy
Speaker 1: in Texas named John Wells who was building. He built
Speaker 1: something very similar to that called the He called it
Speaker 1: the bike O Worsher Worsher spelled w O R s
Speaker 1: h e R and through Texas Fashion UH. It was
Speaker 1: part of the Southwest Texas Alternative Energy and Sustainable Living
Speaker 1: Field Laboratory. So the idea was that he was building
Speaker 1: stuff that would allow you to have a sustainable life
Speaker 1: where you're not depending so much on things like electricity.
Speaker 1: And it was a really cool project. But it's very
Speaker 1: similar to the stuff you see in these developing nations now.
Speaker 1: In the case of Texas, obviously it's not due to
Speaker 1: lack of electricity. It's more of kind of a an
Speaker 1: UH environmentally friendly lifestyle that he wants to adopt, right
Speaker 1: But in the case of Guatemala, it may be necessity
Speaker 1: because not all places in rural rural areas of these
Speaker 1: these countries have access to regular electricity. Yeah, yeah, that's true.
Speaker 1: And one of the things that struck me and doing
Speaker 1: research for this podcast is the similarity of some of
Speaker 1: these inventions to things that you might see in the
Speaker 1: pages of Make magazine or among the er community, um
Speaker 1: you know, talking about different bike machines. For example, I
Speaker 1: remember watching a video probably more than a year ago
Speaker 1: now where uh, some some folks in San Francisco basically
Speaker 1: collect old bikes and what they do is they cut
Speaker 1: them apart and make new bikes out of them. I
Speaker 1: mean they're they're strange contraptions, things with different size wheels
Speaker 1: and all sorts of others. Mostly too. It's like an
Speaker 1: art bike's community, and it's mostly because they can and
Speaker 1: and want to have fun doing that. But you can,
Speaker 1: you can do the same kinds of things to to
Speaker 1: uh uh, to create sustainable UM machinery. Yeah. I saw
Speaker 1: a great video from the Maya Pedal Group where they
Speaker 1: showed a de grainer and it was what it was
Speaker 1: was it was this it looked like the back half
Speaker 1: of a bicycle. But then there was this shoot that
Speaker 1: you could feed uh corn through corn that's actually still
Speaker 1: on the cob, uncooked corn, and you would feed it
Speaker 1: through and had a series of gears that would end
Speaker 1: up pulling the kernels off the cob so that you
Speaker 1: could de grain that corn very very efficiently. You just
Speaker 1: turn the you know, you're peddling, that's what's turning the
Speaker 1: gears and uh. It was so much faster than doing
Speaker 1: it by hand, and it actually saves a lot of
Speaker 1: time and effort. So that was another example. But they
Speaker 1: had lots of other ones that I saw. One that
Speaker 1: was a a pedal powered blender, and they were showing
Speaker 1: how they were using aloe plants. They would take the
Speaker 1: skin off the allow plant and chop it up, put
Speaker 1: it in with some water and a blender, uh, and
Speaker 1: then uh start peddling. And they would use this to
Speaker 1: create things like shampoos that they could then sell, and
Speaker 1: it was a way of generating money because these are
Speaker 1: in general, the communities that these these projects are benefiting
Speaker 1: are incredibly poor compared to the lives that most of
Speaker 1: the people in the west, uh, like the developed nations
Speaker 1: are used to. So for example, for for me and Chris,
Speaker 1: you know, the thought of Uh, the reason why these
Speaker 1: devices are so important is because they they take away
Speaker 1: the reliance upon things like kerosene, which might cost four
Speaker 1: dollars a week, and that is prohibitively expensive. I mean
Speaker 1: that is that's a totally different world than the world
Speaker 1: we live in. Yeah. Basically, if you're listening to this podcast,
Speaker 1: you know this, this is kind of a different different experience. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So yeah, the and and there was a lot of
Speaker 1: other examples of the same sort of thing, mostly, you know,
Speaker 1: all these really cool versions of bikes, uh, to do
Speaker 1: things like make tiles. There was a bicycle bicycle powered
Speaker 1: thresher for for harvesting crops. There there were water pumps.
Speaker 1: I saw one where a guy was riding a bike
Speaker 1: and water was coming out of a of a pipe
Speaker 1: and it was it was like a bicycle powered well yeah, um.
Speaker 1: I actually ran across an invention from the Nippon Basic
Speaker 1: company in Japan called the cyclo Clean and basically it's
Speaker 1: it's designed to you add it to the bike. It's
Speaker 1: kind of hard to describe, you might want to look
Speaker 1: it up, but it's it's got water containers so somebody
Speaker 1: would ride there by and it goes on your bike. Uh,
Speaker 1: an existing bike, so it's not unmodified if you will,
Speaker 1: you don't want to cut a bike apart or anything
Speaker 1: like that as a moving bike. And uh so you
Speaker 1: ride to a place a source of water. Now, if
Speaker 1: you think about lakes or streams, creeks, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: most of us listening to this podcast probably know all
Speaker 1: sorts of micro organisms live in that water. A lot
Speaker 1: of it isn't safe to drink, and a lot of
Speaker 1: people around the world don't have access to clean water. Um.
Speaker 1: So what this does is you pour the water into
Speaker 1: the containers and as you uh you know, using the
Speaker 1: kinetic energy of pedaling the bike, the Cyclo clean will
Speaker 1: filter the water. So it actually creates potable water by
Speaker 1: the energy of the bike, and it's it's portable and potable.
Speaker 1: So it's that that's a pretty nifty um, I guess,
Speaker 1: just potent pot but um, actually, I just want to
Speaker 1: point out before we move on real quick. UM, A
Speaker 1: lot of the devices that I found, uh in researching
Speaker 1: this episode are not things we can talk about because
Speaker 1: they're they're invented, they're intended to be inexpensive, and they're new,
Speaker 1: so it's not really repurposing technology. There are so many
Speaker 1: really cool devices, it might it might also be worth
Speaker 1: investigating it again in the future. Some of the really
Speaker 1: cool devices that are you know, they'll be like a
Speaker 1: twenty dollar or something and it completely does a very
Speaker 1: useful function and speeds life. And I'm like, oh, man,
Speaker 1: if I could just use like we you know, Dean
Speaker 1: came in the whole thing about you know, his his
Speaker 1: water projects, which I think we talked about in the
Speaker 1: Cayman podcast, but that was years ago anyway, So I
Speaker 1: wanted to also mention, Yeah, Maya Pedal if you if
Speaker 1: you live in the United States or Canada and you're
Speaker 1: interested in donating an old bicycle to this. Maya Pedal
Speaker 1: does have its own website and you can learn more
Speaker 1: about the program and how you can participate. They also
Speaker 1: invite people to come down and visit their facilities in Guatemala. Obviously,
Speaker 1: you can even work there for a while, volunteer there
Speaker 1: for a while, and help do things like make repairs
Speaker 1: or design new machines. Um. It's very much a hacker
Speaker 1: culture in the sense of they have they have specific
Speaker 1: tasks they need to achieve, they have a specific set
Speaker 1: of resources, they they they are at their disposal and
Speaker 1: they have to find the way to make the resources
Speaker 1: meet their their needs. So they're not interested in making
Speaker 1: it look pretty. They're not interested in any of that.
Speaker 1: Their aesthetics are not important. Yeah, it's all about achieving
Speaker 1: the goal. And and that's something that appeals to a
Speaker 1: lot of hackers who are all about, hey, yeah, I
Speaker 1: know that this was meant to do this one thing,
Speaker 1: but you know, if we just changed it a little bit,
Speaker 1: we could totally do this other thing. Let's see if
Speaker 1: we can make it happen. And uh, you read a
Speaker 1: lot about that kind of stuff in these in these stories. Um,
Speaker 1: there was another one that I wanted to mention, very
Speaker 1: similar kind of idea again using bicycles. A fellow named
Speaker 1: how Watts invented something designed to help countries that are
Speaker 1: all about dealing with e waste. So, you know, old electronics,
Speaker 1: if you're right, yeah, if you've ever if you've ever
Speaker 1: tried to get rid of your electronics, maybe maybe you've
Speaker 1: tried to put them in some sort of e waste
Speaker 1: recycle program. One of the problems of of some of
Speaker 1: those programs, not all of them, they're not all created equal,
Speaker 1: but some of those programs, yes, some of these programs
Speaker 1: ship that stuff off to various developing nations where they
Speaker 1: have an industry all around recycling that material. And it's
Speaker 1: mostly about recapturing the metals that are used in those products,
Speaker 1: mainly copper, yeah, and lead to that's another one of
Speaker 1: the big ones, recapturing the copper and lead that's used
Speaker 1: in these electronics. It can be a very dangerous thing
Speaker 1: to do if you aren't being if you're if you're
Speaker 1: not following particular steps right and and it can release
Speaker 1: a lot of toxic elements into the environment and also
Speaker 1: affect people's health. Yeah. The thing is too that in
Speaker 1: in some of these cases, the people who are disassembling
Speaker 1: the electronics aren't given the proper tools to do that,
Speaker 1: and some I've read about people who had to put
Speaker 1: materials into a fire essentially intending to melt it all down,
Speaker 1: and of course in doing so, it releases toxic chemical
Speaker 1: toxic chemicals, uh, into this the soil um people in
Speaker 1: the atmosphere. The people in the immediate area have health
Speaker 1: problems as a result of the metals leaching into their soil.
Speaker 1: It can it can affect areas even further out from
Speaker 1: the immediate area. It's it's one of those. In a way,
Speaker 1: it really shows that environmental concerns and ecology go beyond
Speaker 1: just the point. Like there's a there's like a ring effect,
Speaker 1: right you you move one ring further out from the center,
Speaker 1: and you can still see where the effects are and
Speaker 1: they might not be a severe and they may not
Speaker 1: be the same effects as you would see right at
Speaker 1: the point of contact, but it's still negative. Well, in
Speaker 1: this case, very it's exactly what you're talking about. You know,
Speaker 1: a lot of these UH countries, what they do is
Speaker 1: that they will use fire to melt stuff down. Like
Speaker 1: like let's say copper wire that's insulated, So you've got
Speaker 1: a rubber insulation around copper wire. Well, they want to
Speaker 1: get to the copper. They want to get the rubber
Speaker 1: off of there. And what's an efficient way of doing that. Well,
Speaker 1: you could burn the rubber off, but that can release
Speaker 1: a lot of toxic chemicals into the atmost sphere and
Speaker 1: get it into the ground as well. UH. And then
Speaker 1: you also have essentially you have burnt copper, which is
Speaker 1: not as valuable as copper that has not been put
Speaker 1: through this process. Chris and I will be back to
Speaker 1: talk a little bit more about this repurposing technology for
Speaker 1: developing countries idea of First, let's take a quick break.
Speaker 1: So what Watts did was he built a machine that
Speaker 1: was again a bicycle powered machine where he called it
Speaker 1: the E Source and it has a grinder in it
Speaker 1: and it has also a metal separator. Uh it's it's
Speaker 1: it's like a centrifuge in a way. And what you
Speaker 1: do is you put the copper wire into the grinder
Speaker 1: and you pedal the petals. Some grinders actually grind that
Speaker 1: up so that the rubber and the and the copper
Speaker 1: come apart. It shreds the copper y air, so you
Speaker 1: get smaller segments of copper wire and the rubbers is
Speaker 1: pulled right off of the copper. The spinning plate actually
Speaker 1: spends so that it separates out the copper from the rubbers.
Speaker 1: So then you've got these rubber pellets on one side
Speaker 1: and you've got the copper on the other side. And
Speaker 1: it means that you no longer have the danger of
Speaker 1: burning this stuff and releasing the toxic chemicals, and you
Speaker 1: can actually recycle the rubber as well. So it it
Speaker 1: also adds a second level of revenue to this process,
Speaker 1: which before was all about the metal because you know,
Speaker 1: you couldn't use the rubber after you've burnt it off.
Speaker 1: But now you've got this these rubber pellets that you
Speaker 1: can actually use in other forms of recycling. So it
Speaker 1: adds benefit to the process and it takes away some
Speaker 1: of the more dangerous parts of recycling electronics. So that
Speaker 1: was his invention. There's actually video on the web. He's
Speaker 1: got a website about the source. So if you and
Speaker 1: it's E S O U R C E. If you
Speaker 1: do a search for that, you can actually find his
Speaker 1: website and learn more about it and the project that
Speaker 1: he's been working on. It's really really interesting. So that's
Speaker 1: another example of again using bicycles. There are a lot
Speaker 1: of those, because bicycles are one of those that's a
Speaker 1: piece of technology that's common around the world. And uh
Speaker 1: and and it's one of those that um it's it's
Speaker 1: so much more accessible than other kinds of technology, and
Speaker 1: so it's not dependent upon electricity or fuel it's got
Speaker 1: uh it's it's really attractive for these communities that might
Speaker 1: not otherwise be able to afford the sort of technology
Speaker 1: that can do whatever it is these machines do. Yeah.
Speaker 1: In in a similar vein. You actually wrote about one
Speaker 1: of the technologies I wanted to talk about. UM and uh,
Speaker 1: you know, one of the serious problems that they have
Speaker 1: in some developing nations or a lot of developing nations,
Speaker 1: I should say, is uh uh you know babies who
Speaker 1: are are born prematurely um and uh you know, uh,
Speaker 1: they need infubation to to keep them warm. And uh,
Speaker 1: I think it's really clever. There's Jonathan wrote an article
Speaker 1: for the website how Stuff Works dot com on on
Speaker 1: using engines to serve as incubators. Um. It's really really
Speaker 1: cool stuff. Basically, uh, you know they uh it uses
Speaker 1: a an engine to to generate the heat, but um,
Speaker 1: it also has a battery powered back up. And it
Speaker 1: was actually developed by the Center for Integration of Medicine
Speaker 1: and Innovative Technology or SIMMIT, and a a company called
Speaker 1: Design That Matters UM, which uh you know is into
Speaker 1: all kinds of different design really. Um, they had a
Speaker 1: basically they had a contest to see who could who
Speaker 1: could come up with the best uh contraption for this
Speaker 1: and it you know uses um basically different parts of
Speaker 1: the automotive assembly for you know, um uh there's a
Speaker 1: handrail built into it. For example, and there you know,
Speaker 1: they're parts that that come that are not part of it,
Speaker 1: the automotive kit, but the rest of it. You know,
Speaker 1: they use the headlights to generate heat and HV a
Speaker 1: C form you know, to stir the heat around. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's that was definitely an interesting project to read
Speaker 1: about because again it was uh it was this idea
Speaker 1: that it's not just the problem of um of getting
Speaker 1: the tech to them, it's getting tech that is easy
Speaker 1: to maintain. And it's a lot easier to maintain the
Speaker 1: basic parts of an automobile. Again, and technology that has
Speaker 1: fairly wide distribution than it is for something that's incredibly specialized.
Speaker 1: So if a hospital sent uh A a high tech
Speaker 1: incubator to a developing nation and that incubator were to
Speaker 1: break down, as you know technology tends to do over time,
Speaker 1: it's a lot harder for that. It may be impossible
Speaker 1: for that that organization to make repairs. It may take
Speaker 1: months to get a broken machine fixed when it's got
Speaker 1: that level of sophistication, and the tools that the people
Speaker 1: have don't meet that level of sophistication. So being able
Speaker 1: to create technology that can accomplish the same goal, but
Speaker 1: but is built from much more basic types of tech
Speaker 1: that have a lot more distribution around the world. Means
Speaker 1: that you have made it far more accessible. Because again,
Speaker 1: in fact I read this, and this was from Make magazine,
Speaker 1: there was a great article by Paul spin Rad called
Speaker 1: design for hack in Medicine, and in that there was
Speaker 1: a little fact that said about medical technology that reaches
Speaker 1: poor country is hand me down equipment designed for first
Speaker 1: world facilities. That's the problem because these are not first
Speaker 1: world facilities that these these devices are going to, so
Speaker 1: there's limited use there. Um. You don't you don't go
Speaker 1: in and plug something into the wall in some of
Speaker 1: these cases. You don't have a wall to plug into
Speaker 1: in some of these cases, so you have to come
Speaker 1: up with a new way of powering that. And I
Speaker 1: think I misspoke a few minutes ago when I was
Speaker 1: talking about using the car engines. They don't, you know,
Speaker 1: put the kid on the engine. That would not be
Speaker 1: very good. Um. Now they used the engines for parts. Um,
Speaker 1: And that's because the the you know, people have the
Speaker 1: tech around and generally people know how to repair a car,
Speaker 1: so they know what the different pieces do, and uh,
Speaker 1: you know, the parts would be available and then, uh,
Speaker 1: I want to talk a little bit about a fellow
Speaker 1: named Jose Gomez Marquez. Now he's really looked into this
Speaker 1: medical issue about creating medical equipment for countries that do
Speaker 1: not have first world medical facilities, and uh, there's a
Speaker 1: whole list of different kinds of technology that he and
Speaker 1: his team have come up with, uh to help out
Speaker 1: these countries. One of those was a device that actually
Speaker 1: uses sunlight to sterilize surgical tools, which again that's that's
Speaker 1: phenomenal and according to the articles is it uses a bucket,
Speaker 1: a pressure cooker, and one forty pocket sized mirrors, which
Speaker 1: all of which were purchased out of a Nicaraguan market,
Speaker 1: and then they built out this device that uses sun
Speaker 1: sunlight to end up heating these surgical tools so they
Speaker 1: are sterilized because they don't have electricity or at least
Speaker 1: not enough electricity to power a regular autoclave for sterilizing tools,
Speaker 1: and that if they were to go with one that
Speaker 1: ran on fuel, it would cost them so much money.
Speaker 1: And again we're talking small amounts of money for most
Speaker 1: of us, but for these communities it's it's prohibitively expensive
Speaker 1: to run those sort of devices, which means that you
Speaker 1: are risking some major medical catastrophes if you do not
Speaker 1: have properly sterilized surgical tools. You know, you're talking about
Speaker 1: possibility for terrible infections that could really make patient mortality
Speaker 1: rates skyrocket. So this was a way of creating a
Speaker 1: device that doesn't depend on electricity. It just uses sunlight,
Speaker 1: which you know too, it's much easier to to to
Speaker 1: get hold of than it would for something like electricity.
Speaker 1: So that was a good example. But then the article
Speaker 1: actually goes into other things that were developed specifically for
Speaker 1: this UH, for this community and communities like it through
Speaker 1: m I T. Which was this idea of medi kits.
Speaker 1: Have you read about these UM I did? Yeah. Gmess
Speaker 1: Marquez is UH program director for m I T s
Speaker 1: Innovations and International Health Program. And then the idea behind
Speaker 1: these kits and this program is that um these these
Speaker 1: parts and pieces are available two UH physicians and who
Speaker 1: are working in these areas, they might be able to
Speaker 1: find that, and so the point was to teach them
Speaker 1: how to use everyday stuff to make equipment that they
Speaker 1: would have. You know, they would be familiar with his
Speaker 1: physicians in the first world, they would already be familiar
Speaker 1: with that the pre made, manufactured version of this. Now
Speaker 1: that he's his group wants to teach people how to
Speaker 1: take uh these parts and do it themselves on on
Speaker 1: the fly, right from what's on hand. And in fact,
Speaker 1: uh they they have these med kits that come in
Speaker 1: in five different variations. So there's drug delivery, lateral flow diagnostics,
Speaker 1: lab on a chip, vital signs, agricultural prosthetics, which the
Speaker 1: agricultural prosthetics one is pretty pretty wild to me, but
Speaker 1: we'll we'll, I'll talk about that in a second. Anyway,
Speaker 1: it's talking about taking a lot of like Chris was saying,
Speaker 1: a lot of basic elements that you can find in
Speaker 1: other forms of machinery and electronics, So talking about things
Speaker 1: like um plungers or bicycle pumps or compressors, tilt sensors,
Speaker 1: that sort of stuff, these basic elements, and then teaching
Speaker 1: people different ways of putting those things together to accomplish
Speaker 1: whatever your goals are. And in fact, they talked a
Speaker 1: lot about how they learned about using toys parts from
Speaker 1: toys as medical equipment, so things like a remote controlled
Speaker 1: helicopter and removing some of the machinery from that in
Speaker 1: order to create a medical device I talked about even
Speaker 1: there was an electric mechanical ferris wheel toy that could
Speaker 1: be double as a centrifew just with some modification. Chris
Speaker 1: and I have a little bit more to talk about
Speaker 1: on this particular topic, but before we get to that,
Speaker 1: let's take another quick break. The comparable medical equipment if
Speaker 1: this country were to try and buy, it would be
Speaker 1: really expensive, like we're talking about really sophisticated medical equipment,
Speaker 1: but that you could accomplish the same outcome with these
Speaker 1: low tech approaches just by repurposing the technology and suddenly
Speaker 1: the cost drops dramatically. So suddenly these these things that
Speaker 1: were out of reach for these medical facilities become attainable.
Speaker 1: It just means that you have to learn how to
Speaker 1: adapt this technology so that they can do what you
Speaker 1: needed to do. And the article was so fascinating to
Speaker 1: me because it talks so much about how they found
Speaker 1: They discovered that there were people in the field already
Speaker 1: doing this right. It had there are people who were
Speaker 1: taking aquipment and saying all right, well, I'm just gonna
Speaker 1: take this one piece of equipment I have, and I'm
Speaker 1: going to alter it in this way so it can
Speaker 1: do what I did needed to do better than it
Speaker 1: can right now, because the the use cases might be
Speaker 1: very specific and the equipment might be very generalized. And
Speaker 1: so you might have a generalized piece of equipment that
Speaker 1: can do a lot of stuff, but it can't do
Speaker 1: it as well as a modified piece of equipment could.
Speaker 1: And they were starting to see how people were modifying
Speaker 1: things and improvising out in the field in order to
Speaker 1: make repairs or to make modifications to get better results.
Speaker 1: Uh is really really interesting and UH also really speaks
Speaker 1: a lot to human ingenuity. Yeah. Well, I think I
Speaker 1: think for somebody who would be trained, um, in a
Speaker 1: modern hospital to do medical care, you would be thinking
Speaker 1: of the technology that that we have available to us.
Speaker 1: And I think that the trick is to get people
Speaker 1: to see the similarities between everyday stuff and the high
Speaker 1: tech equivalent. Um. You know the photo I I saw
Speaker 1: in the article I read about about this program. Uh,
Speaker 1: they show him using a a drinking straw for a pipette. Now,
Speaker 1: you know, I would think, uh, myself, and I'm not
Speaker 1: a medical professional by any stretch of the imagination, but
Speaker 1: you know, having elementary chemistry classes in high school, thinking,
Speaker 1: you know, well that that's kind of you know, that's
Speaker 1: that's not as scientific and it's not as sanitary. But uh,
Speaker 1: you know, if if if you do things carefully and
Speaker 1: you know what you're doing, you can still do a
Speaker 1: lot with that technology available. And that's I think that's
Speaker 1: the point is to draw that parallels that you see. Yes,
Speaker 1: I mean you are achieving the same goal with this
Speaker 1: everyday technology that you would be with this highly precise
Speaker 1: manufactured stuff, and you can do it with what you
Speaker 1: have and it will will help people. Um. It is
Speaker 1: worth pointing out that a lot of there are are
Speaker 1: initiatives and non governmental organizations that are repurposing uh less
Speaker 1: modern technology, you know, stuff that's five years out of date,
Speaker 1: ten years out of date, so there's still perfectly viable
Speaker 1: and and sending it to to other countries that don't
Speaker 1: have access to those technologies, which is which is you
Speaker 1: know great, rather than scrapping it. Um, you know, somebody
Speaker 1: else is able to put it to use, but not
Speaker 1: everyone can use that. So these these initiatives are certainly
Speaker 1: very valuable. Yeah, And getting back to the medicate stuff,
Speaker 1: what the the team discovered was that when they started
Speaker 1: to distribute these medicates, Uh, let me read a quote
Speaker 1: from the articles as we designed the limits of our
Speaker 1: early kids carefully, but when users began to snap on,
Speaker 1: extend and test their creations, something emerged that we did
Speaker 1: not anticipate. They hacked our kids, which is what we
Speaker 1: were talking about, Like they made the kids modular, like
Speaker 1: these ideas of these modular kits, so that you could
Speaker 1: create different as all as like the medical version of
Speaker 1: Ardwin Knows Stuff. It was a very modular approach to
Speaker 1: creating medical equipment. But they were going beyond the modular
Speaker 1: approach and adding in elements that were not part of
Speaker 1: the kit, or physically altering parts of the kit in
Speaker 1: order to do what they needed it to do. And
Speaker 1: they started to see that, okay, well, with this sort
Speaker 1: of mentality, which makes perfect sense. You know that they
Speaker 1: are trying to to meet the needs of whatever their
Speaker 1: community happens to be. They said, all right, we have
Speaker 1: to think to design these kits with hacking in mind,
Speaker 1: knowing that the stuff is going to get hacked when
Speaker 1: we send it out. We have to design the kits.
Speaker 1: And they said, while it's impossible to predict every type
Speaker 1: of device a kit can produce, you can start with
Speaker 1: a core set of devices start to add degrees of
Speaker 1: freedom to that core and then try to anticipate in
Speaker 1: design areas in which those degrees will be hacked. And
Speaker 1: the reason why they want to make sure that they
Speaker 1: take this into account is one so that the devices
Speaker 1: are as accessible and useful as possible, but too, and
Speaker 1: possibly more importantly, they want to put safety measures in
Speaker 1: place so that if you were to hack this medikit,
Speaker 1: you would not end up creating a device that could
Speaker 1: cause more harm than good. So that was their other
Speaker 1: concern was that, all right, well, we want to make
Speaker 1: sure that whatever we design, it's not going to end
Speaker 1: up killing people when a hack goes wrong, because not
Speaker 1: every time hackers know this, Not every attempt is a success.
Speaker 1: Sometimes you take stuff apart and it just don't work
Speaker 1: no more. Uh, some of us. That's the only kind
Speaker 1: of hacker we are. I'm guilty of that. I can
Speaker 1: take things apart really well, putting it back together and
Speaker 1: making it work. Okay, it's a baby step process, people.
Speaker 1: So anyway, where did these extra pieces come from? I
Speaker 1: don't even know what this fits in. UM. I wanted
Speaker 1: to talk a little bit about the Agricultural Prosthetic medic Kit,
Speaker 1: a flavor of med kits they had because that was
Speaker 1: one that I thought was kind of interesting. So the
Speaker 1: kit essentially has a universal gripper. So this is a
Speaker 1: device for people who have lost a limb and need
Speaker 1: needs something in order to be able to uh to
Speaker 1: to harvest crops. So it might be something so that
Speaker 1: you could pick fruit from a tree. But let's say
Speaker 1: you've lost a limb through some terrible injury or illness,
Speaker 1: and in some cases that would lead people not to
Speaker 1: to want to hire you anymore because there because you're
Speaker 1: no longer as effective. So this is a This kit
Speaker 1: came with a universal gripper made from PVC bicycle inner
Speaker 1: tubes and a soda bottle to attach most farm tools
Speaker 1: onto the arm or forearm of an amputee farmer. So
Speaker 1: the soda bottle was the part that fit over the
Speaker 1: whatever part of the arm remains right, so that would
Speaker 1: fit on that, and then the rest would extend from
Speaker 1: the soda bottle out ending in the universe in the
Speaker 1: universal grippers that it could pull or grip onto whatever
Speaker 1: it is you needed and uh and said. Each part
Speaker 1: of the kit follows the same three principles. Core device
Speaker 1: modifier device and consumables, um. And then it talked about
Speaker 1: how and in various articles talked about how people who
Speaker 1: received these kits even then would modify them further by
Speaker 1: adding in other elements like other stuff to extend the
Speaker 1: arm even further than it was already meant to go,
Speaker 1: so that it could help people reach crops that otherwise
Speaker 1: would be out of their range. So again, people took
Speaker 1: the stuff that were that was distributed and made even
Speaker 1: more modifications so that it was more useful for their
Speaker 1: own daily lives. Uh, fascinating stuff. And and again I
Speaker 1: mean the the ingenuity here, like people noticing that a
Speaker 1: noisemaker in a toy could be used as an alarm
Speaker 1: system for a medical device, so that when something is
Speaker 1: getting to a critical parameter, it goes noises made so
Speaker 1: that it alerts people. Things like that, like where they
Speaker 1: don't have that specialized equipment, they're building it themselves. It's
Speaker 1: really interesting to me. Yeah, well that's that's what tech
Speaker 1: stuff is about. UM. You know, if you're long term listener,
Speaker 1: you know that Jonathan and I like to talk about
Speaker 1: technology and people, how it how it affects people, And UM,
Speaker 1: I think this is this is really awesome because a
Speaker 1: lot of these devices that people are taking apart are
Speaker 1: are either obsolete or are broken, and they're repurposing them
Speaker 1: and helping other people with that, and I just I
Speaker 1: just think that's absolutely fantastic. Yeah, it's it's not just ingenuity,
Speaker 1: but compassion and those two, those two elements coming together.
Speaker 1: That's that's like the best of humanity, right. If you're
Speaker 1: talking about caring for other people and using your your
Speaker 1: creative endeavors to come up with new solutions, that's a
Speaker 1: great story. And uh, and so guys, if you have
Speaker 1: interest in this, I highly recommend you look into some
Speaker 1: of these projects further and see maybe there's something you
Speaker 1: can help out with. Maybe there's something you can either
Speaker 1: donate money to, or even better, if you are able
Speaker 1: to donate your time or expertise to some of these projects,
Speaker 1: you can make an enormous difference in the lives of
Speaker 1: other people and and bring a help bring a better
Speaker 1: living experience to people who really are having a totally
Speaker 1: different kind of life than the one most of us
Speaker 1: are used to. Yeah. I mean, even if it's it's
Speaker 1: just a small thing to you, it may make a
Speaker 1: real difference in someone else's life. That's true. So I'm
Speaker 1: glad that we had this discussion. I think that that's
Speaker 1: a good overview of the subject. Now there are a
Speaker 1: lot more examples that are out there. We really just
Speaker 1: covered some some pretty broad topics. But I do recommend
Speaker 1: you look into it if this is something that interests
Speaker 1: you and uh and maybe you'll find your passion like
Speaker 1: Adam did. Who you know, he he really uprooted his
Speaker 1: entire life in order to pursue this, and that's that's amazing.
Speaker 1: Happiness Plunge. Indeed, in fact, that Happiness Plunge dot com folks,
Speaker 1: if you want to take a look at his website
Speaker 1: because it's it's a crazy, wonderful sort of thing to do. Um,
Speaker 1: I'm not sure that I am the kind of person
Speaker 1: who could who could make that commitment. I am amazed
Speaker 1: at people who do, and thankful for them as well.
Speaker 1: And that wraps up this classic episode of tech Stuff.
Speaker 1: If you guys have any suggestions for future episodes, why
Speaker 1: not get in touch with me let me know. You
Speaker 1: can send me an email the addresses tech Stuff at
Speaker 1: how stuff works dot com or pop on over to
Speaker 1: our website that's tech Stuff podcast dot com. You will
Speaker 1: find an archive of all of our past shows. You'll
Speaker 1: find links to our presence on social media, and you
Speaker 1: will also find a link to our online store, where
Speaker 1: every purchase you make goes to help this show and
Speaker 1: we greatly appreciate it, and I will talk to you
Speaker 1: again really soon. Tex Stuff is a production of I
Speaker 1: Heart Radio's How Stuff Works. For more podcasts from my
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