Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you get in touch with technology with
Speaker 1: tech Stuff from how stuff works dot com. Hello again, everyone,
Speaker 1: and welcome to tech stuff. My name is Chris Poette,
Speaker 1: and I'm an editor here at how stuff works dot com.
Speaker 1: Sitting across from me as is usual, I albeit a
Speaker 1: few minutes later than the typical, is senior writer Jonathan Strickland.
Speaker 1: Hey there, and everybody, remember to tell Tyler he had
Speaker 1: one thing to do today. That's an inside joke. We
Speaker 1: are going to talk a little bit today. We're continuing
Speaker 1: our series about reinventing and repurposing technology and cool and
Speaker 1: interesting ways. Uh, we're gonna talk about something that's really
Speaker 1: 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. What 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. Packs 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 want 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 wanted to kind of get into that and
Speaker 1: sort of talk about the different ways people have tried
Speaker 1: to to accomplish this. And uh, I'm sorry, you're gonna
Speaker 1: say something, Well, I was gonna say that in in
Speaker 1: some of these places, uh, you know, these are the
Speaker 1: places where, for example, cell phones have really vaulted over
Speaker 1: land lines because a lot of a lot of areas
Speaker 1: 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.
Speaker 1: Um you know, really it's a an urban versus rural
Speaker 1: thing anyway. But but um, yeah, a lot of more
Speaker 1: the rural places where or places that are more removed
Speaker 1: where there's a lot of distance in between that area
Speaker 1: and an urban area. UM uh cell phone usage. You
Speaker 1: know it's easier to put up the towers than it
Speaker 1: is to wire those places for landlines. So UM you
Speaker 1: know that. In doing research for other podcasts where we've
Speaker 1: talked about phones, UM, I've just run across stories what
Speaker 1: they've said, Well, you know, cell phone usage per capita
Speaker 1: maybe higher in some of these other places, simply because
Speaker 1: everybody's got a cell phone. They never had a landline phone.
Speaker 1: It's not that they ropped one for the other. It's
Speaker 1: like they completely leap frogged. Yeah, and and and and
Speaker 1: the play and some of these inventions that we're going
Speaker 1: to talk about UM or these technologies, Uh, they may
Speaker 1: not necessarily have uh for example, electricity seven, but they
Speaker 1: might be able to repurpose some of these other things,
Speaker 1: uh inexpensively to improve their lives through this other technology.
Speaker 1: And it is a lot of it is very inventive.
Speaker 1: I actually saw Apollo thirteen invoked in one of the
Speaker 1: articles that I was searching for because UM, if you
Speaker 1: know the story that was the mission where um they
Speaker 1: the astronauts had serious, serious problems because they're some of
Speaker 1: the technology failed, UM and they had to come up
Speaker 1: with other stuff on the fly. I know that was
Speaker 1: actually the uh, the genesis of the idea for the
Speaker 1: TV show scrap Heap Challenge, which in the United States
Speaker 1: was Junkyard Wars, where you had to just throw some
Speaker 1: other stuff together. And that's sort of this the same
Speaker 1: idea would you would you would go through a junkyard
Speaker 1: and you would salvage different machines in order to build
Speaker 1: something that was specifically intended to achieve a a particular
Speaker 1: goal which was established at the beginning of the show.
Speaker 1: So you would have a goal like it might be
Speaker 1: traversed this this landscape here, and you're going to have
Speaker 1: to be able to go up, you know, a twenty
Speaker 1: degree incline, and there's going to be a section that's
Speaker 1: gonna be rocky, and there might even be a section
Speaker 1: where you have to travel across water. So you have
Speaker 1: to build a machine that's capable capable of doing all
Speaker 1: those things. But all you have is whatever is in
Speaker 1: this junkyard. Yeah, and of course they did up it's TV,
Speaker 1: so they'd end up seeding the junkyard a handful of
Speaker 1: necessary parts because if nobody ever, you know, they don't
Speaker 1: know everything that's in the junkyard. I'm sure they go, well,
Speaker 1: it turns out that there isn't any of this stuff
Speaker 1: and we're kind of stuck, so it would make it
Speaker 1: would not make for interesting television, so they would they
Speaker 1: would put in things in there. But here's the thing
Speaker 1: is that people are really inventive, right, and they can
Speaker 1: come up with solutions that you do not and to
Speaker 1: to pay. 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 the 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, and there's some cases
Speaker 1: where it's not even repurposing in the sense of making
Speaker 1: something do something it wasn't meant to do, like repurposing,
Speaker 1: just as in reusing. So there are a lot of
Speaker 1: these programs that allow you to do things like donate
Speaker 1: your 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 Pedal 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 reac condition them
Speaker 1: and sell them or they use the parts to build
Speaker 1: what they call and I'm going to completely butcher the
Speaker 1: pronunciation of this biking mackinas or bike powered machines pedal
Speaker 1: powered machines, and so what they're doing is they're actually
Speaker 1: taking these bikes apart to some extent, and using that
Speaker 1: pedal power. So instead of it turning a wheel, it's
Speaker 1: turning some other mechanical part to accomplish a task that
Speaker 1: they might otherwise not have a mechanical opportunity to to
Speaker 1: address it, like things like and the simple stuff. You know,
Speaker 1: Adam and mentioned things like a washing machine. Well that's
Speaker 1: a that's a perfect example. You've got a big tub
Speaker 1: that you put the water in, the soap in, the
Speaker 1: clothing in, and you have an agitator in there, something
Speaker 1: that turns around and moves the clothing so that it
Speaker 1: creates this agitation which will help the soap and water
Speaker 1: work out all the soil and everything else that's in
Speaker 1: the clothing. You have that agitator hooked up through a
Speaker 1: series of of gears and chains or belts to a
Speaker 1: pedal system on a bike, and it might even have
Speaker 1: the back half of the bike more or less intact,
Speaker 1: where you've got the seat and everything, and you sit
Speaker 1: down the seat, you pedal the pedals, it turns the
Speaker 1: agitator and it ends up washing clothing that way. There's
Speaker 1: actually a guy in Texas who had um a blog.
Speaker 1: The last entry I saw was in two but there
Speaker 1: was a guy in Texas named John Wells who was
Speaker 1: building He built something very similar to that called the
Speaker 1: He called it the bike O Worsher worshipers spelled w
Speaker 1: O R s h e R in true Texas fashion. Uh.
Speaker 1: He was part of the Southwest Texas Alternative Energy and
Speaker 1: Sustainable Living Field Laboratory. So the idea was that he
Speaker 1: was building stuff that would allow you to have a
Speaker 1: sustainable life where you're not depending so much on things
Speaker 1: like electricity. And it was a really cool project, but
Speaker 1: it's very similar to the stuff you see in these
Speaker 1: developing nations. Now. In the case of Texas, obviously it's
Speaker 1: not due to lack of electricity. It's more of kind
Speaker 1: of a an uh, environmentally friendly lifestyle that he wants
Speaker 1: to adopt, right right. But in the case of Guatemala,
Speaker 1: it may be necessity because not all places in rural
Speaker 1: rural areas of these these countries have access to regular electricity. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's true. And one of the things that struck me
Speaker 1: and doing research for this podcast is the similarity of
Speaker 1: some of these inventions to things that you might see
Speaker 1: in the pages of Make magazine or among the hacker community.
Speaker 1: Um you know, talking about different bike machines. For example,
Speaker 1: I remember watching a video probably more than a year
Speaker 1: ago now where uh, some some folks in San Francisco
Speaker 1: basically collect old bikes and what they do is they
Speaker 1: cut them apart and make new bikes out of them.
Speaker 1: I mean they're they're strange contraptions. Is things with different
Speaker 1: size wheels and all sorts of others. Mostly too. It's
Speaker 1: like an art bike's community, and it's mostly because they
Speaker 1: can and and want to have fun doing that. But
Speaker 1: you can you can do the same kinds of things
Speaker 1: to to uh uh to create sustainable um machinery. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I saw a great video from the Maya Pedal group
Speaker 1: where they showed a de grainer and it was what
Speaker 1: it was was it was this It looked like the
Speaker 1: back half of a bicycle. But then there was this
Speaker 1: shoot that you could feed uh corn through corn that's
Speaker 1: actually still on the cob, uncooked corn, and you would
Speaker 1: feed it through and it had a series of gears
Speaker 1: that would end up pulling the kernels off the cob
Speaker 1: so that you could d grain that corn. Very very efficiently.
Speaker 1: You just turned the you know, you're peddling, that's what's
Speaker 1: turning the gears. And uh, it was so much faster
Speaker 1: than doing it by hand, and it actually saves a
Speaker 1: lot of time and for it. So that was another example.
Speaker 1: But they had lots of other ones that I saw.
Speaker 1: One that was a a pedal powered blender, and they
Speaker 1: were showing how they were using aloe plants. They would
Speaker 1: take the skin off the alo plant and chop it up,
Speaker 1: put it in with some water and a blender, uh,
Speaker 1: and then uh start peddling. And they would use this
Speaker 1: to create things like shampoos that they could then sell,
Speaker 1: and it was a way of generating money because these
Speaker 1: are in general, the communities that these these projects are
Speaker 1: benefiting are incredibly poor compared to the lives that most
Speaker 1: of the people in the west, 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 spensive. 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,
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
Speaker 1: it's kind of hard to describe. You might want to
Speaker 1: look it up, but it's it's got water containers so
Speaker 1: somebody 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 want to cut a bike apart or anything like
Speaker 1: that as a moving bike. And so you ride to
Speaker 1: a place a source of water. Now, if you think
Speaker 1: about lakes or streams, creeks. Uh. You know, most of
Speaker 1: us listening to this podcast probably know all sorts of
Speaker 1: micro organisms live in that water. A lot of it
Speaker 1: isn't safe to drink, and a lot of people around
Speaker 1: the world don't have access to clean water. Um. So
Speaker 1: what this does is you pour the water into the
Speaker 1: containers and as you uh you know, using the kinetic
Speaker 1: energy of pedaling the bike, the Cyclo clean will filter
Speaker 1: the water, so it actually creates potable water by the
Speaker 1: energy of the bike, and it's it's portable and potable.
Speaker 1: So it's that that's a pretty nifty um. Um. Actually,
Speaker 1: I just want to point out before we move on
Speaker 1: real quick, um, A lot of the devices that I found,
Speaker 1: uh in researching this episode are not things we can
Speaker 1: talk about because they're they're invented, they're intended to be inexpensive,
Speaker 1: and they're new, so it's not really repurposing technology. There
Speaker 1: are so many really cool devices it might it might
Speaker 1: also be worth investigating it again in the future. Some
Speaker 1: of the really cool devices that are you know, they'll
Speaker 1: be like a twenty dollar or something and it completely
Speaker 1: does a very useful function and speeds life. And I'm like, oh, man,
Speaker 1: if I could just use like we could talk. You know,
Speaker 1: Dean came In did the whole thing about you know,
Speaker 1: his his water projects, which I think we talked about
Speaker 1: in the Dean came In podcast, but that was years
Speaker 1: ago anyway, So I wanted to also mention, Yeah, Maya
Speaker 1: Pedal if you if you live in the United States
Speaker 1: or Canada and you're interested in donating an old bicycle
Speaker 1: to this, Maya Pedal does have its own website and
Speaker 1: you can learn more about the program and how you
Speaker 1: can participate. They also invite people to come down and
Speaker 1: visit their facilities in Guatemala. Obviously, you can even work
Speaker 1: there for a while, volunteer there for a while and
Speaker 1: help do things like make repairs or design new machines. Um.
Speaker 1: It's very much a hacker culture in the sense of
Speaker 1: they have they have specific tasks they need to achieve.
Speaker 1: They have a specific set of resources they they they
Speaker 1: are at their disposal, and they have to find the
Speaker 1: way to make the resources meet their their needs. So
Speaker 1: they're not interested in making it look pretty. They're not
Speaker 1: interested in any of that. Their aesthetics are not important. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's all about achieving the goal and and that's something
Speaker 1: that appeals to a lot of hackers who are all about, hey, yeah,
Speaker 1: I 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, some of these programs ship
Speaker 1: that stuff off to various developing nations where they have
Speaker 1: an industry all around recycling that material, and it's mostly
Speaker 1: about recapturing the metals that are used in those products,
Speaker 1: mainly copper. Yeah, and lead to recapturing the copper and
Speaker 1: lead that's used in these electronic It can be a
Speaker 1: very dangerous thing to do if you aren't being if
Speaker 1: you're if you're not following particular steps right and and
Speaker 1: it can release a lot of toxic elements into the
Speaker 1: environment and also affect people's health. Yeah, the thing is
Speaker 1: too that in in some of these cases, the people
Speaker 1: who are disassembling the electronics aren't given the proper tools
Speaker 1: to do that, and some I've read about people who
Speaker 1: had to put materials into a fire essentially intending to
Speaker 1: melt it all down, and of course in doing so,
Speaker 1: it releases toxic chemical toxic chemicals, uh into this the
Speaker 1: soil um people have had in in the atmosphere. The
Speaker 1: people in the immediate area have health problems as a
Speaker 1: result of the the metals leaching into their soil and
Speaker 1: having to breathe the smoke. It can affect areas even
Speaker 1: further out from the immediate area. It's it's one of
Speaker 1: those in a way, it really shows that environmental concerns
Speaker 1: and ecology go beyond just the point. Like there's a
Speaker 1: there's like a ring effect, right you you move one
Speaker 1: ring further out from the center, and you can still
Speaker 1: see where the effects are. And they might not be
Speaker 1: a severe and they may not be the same effects
Speaker 1: as you would see right at the point of contact,
Speaker 1: but it's still negative. Well in this case, very it's
Speaker 1: exactly what you're talking about. You know a lot of
Speaker 1: these UH countries. What they do is that they will
Speaker 1: use fire to melt stuff down, like like let's say
Speaker 1: copper wire that's insulated. So you've got a rubber insulation
Speaker 1: around copper wire. Well, they want to get to the copper.
Speaker 1: They want to get the rubber off of there. And
Speaker 1: what's an efficient way of doing that. Well, you could
Speaker 1: burn the rubber off, but that can release a lot
Speaker 1: of toxic chemicals into the atmosphere and get it into
Speaker 1: the ground as well. Uh. And then you also have
Speaker 1: essentially a burnt copper, which is not as valuable as
Speaker 1: copper that has not been put through this process. So
Speaker 1: what Watts did was he built a machine that was
Speaker 1: again a bicycle powered machine where he called the E
Speaker 1: source and it has a grinder in it and it
Speaker 1: has also a metal separator. Uh. It's it's it's like
Speaker 1: a centrifuge in a way. And what you do is
Speaker 1: you put the copper wire into the grinder and you
Speaker 1: petal the petals. Some grinders actually grind that up so
Speaker 1: that the rubber and the and the copper come apart.
Speaker 1: It shreds the copper wire, so you get smaller segments
Speaker 1: of copper wire, and the rubbers is pulled right off
Speaker 1: of the copper. The spinning plate actually spends so that
Speaker 1: it separates out the copper from the rubbers. So then
Speaker 1: you've got these rubber pellets on one side and you've
Speaker 1: got the copper on the other side, and it means
Speaker 1: that you no longer have the danger of burning this
Speaker 1: stuff and releasing the toxic chemicals, and you can actually
Speaker 1: recycle the rubber as well, so it it also adds
Speaker 1: a second level of revenue to this process, which before
Speaker 1: was all about the metal, because you know, you couldn't
Speaker 1: use the rubber after you've burnt it off. But now
Speaker 1: you've got this these rubber re pellets that you can
Speaker 1: actually use in other forms of recycling. So it adds
Speaker 1: benefit to the process and it takes away some of
Speaker 1: the more dangerous parts of recycling electronics. So that was
Speaker 1: his invention. There's actually video on the web. He's got
Speaker 1: a website all 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 Uh,
Speaker 1: it's it's really a tractive 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 a in a similar vein you actually wrote about
Speaker 1: one of the technologies I wanted to talk about. Um
Speaker 1: and uh, you know, one of the serious problems that
Speaker 1: they have in some developing nations or a lot of
Speaker 1: developing nations, I should say, is uh uh you know
Speaker 1: babies who are are born prematurely um and uh you know, uh,
Speaker 1: they need incubation 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 uh you know uses um, basically different parts
Speaker 1: of the automotive assembly for you know, um uh there's
Speaker 1: a handrail built into it, for example, and there um
Speaker 1: you know, they're parts that that come that are not
Speaker 1: part of the the automotive kit, but the rest of it,
Speaker 1: you know, they use the headlights to generate heat and
Speaker 1: hv A C for um, you know, to stir the
Speaker 1: heat around. Yeah. Yeah, it's it's that was definitely an
Speaker 1: interesting project to read about because again it was uh,
Speaker 1: it was this idea that it's not just the problem
Speaker 1: of um of getting the tech to them, it's getting
Speaker 1: tech that is easy to maintain, and it's a lot
Speaker 1: easier to maintain the basic parts of an automobile. Again,
Speaker 1: a technology that has fairly wide distribution than it is
Speaker 1: for something that's incredibly specialized. So if a hospital sent
Speaker 1: h a a high tech incubator to a developing nation
Speaker 1: and that incubator were to break down, as you know
Speaker 1: technology tends to do over time, it's a lot harder
Speaker 1: for that. It may be impossible for that that organization
Speaker 1: to make repairs. It may take months to get a
Speaker 1: broken machine fixed when it's got that level of sophistication
Speaker 1: and the tools that the people have don't meet that
Speaker 1: level of sophistication. So being able to create technology that
Speaker 1: can accomplish the same goal, but but as built from
Speaker 1: much more basic types of tech that have a lot
Speaker 1: more distribution around the world means that you have made
Speaker 1: it far more accessible. Because again, in fact I read this,
Speaker 1: and this was from MAKE magazine, there was a great
Speaker 1: article by Paul spin Rad called design for Heck in Medicine,
Speaker 1: and in that there was a little fact that said
Speaker 1: about nine of medical technology that reaches poor countries is
Speaker 1: hand me down equipment designed for first world facilities. That's
Speaker 1: the problem because these are not first world facilities that
Speaker 1: these these devices are going to, So there's limited use there. Um,
Speaker 1: you don't you don't go in and plug something into
Speaker 1: the wall in some of these cases, you don't have
Speaker 1: a wall to plug into in some of these cames.
Speaker 1: So you have to come up with a new way
Speaker 1: of powering that. And I think I misspoke a few
Speaker 1: minutes ago when I was talking about using the car engines.
Speaker 1: They don't, you know, put the kid on the engine.
Speaker 1: That would not be very good. Um. Now they used
Speaker 1: the engines for parts, and that's because the you know,
Speaker 1: people have the tech around and generally people know how
Speaker 1: to repair the car, so they know what the different
Speaker 1: pieces do, and uh, you know, the parts would be available.
Speaker 1: And then uh, I want to talk a little bit
Speaker 1: about a fellow named Jose Gomez Marquez. Now he's really
Speaker 1: looked into this medical issue about creating medical equipment for
Speaker 1: countries that do not have first world medical facilities. And uh,
Speaker 1: there's a whole list of different kinds of technology that
Speaker 1: he and his team have come up with, uh to
Speaker 1: help out these countries. One of those was a device
Speaker 1: that actually uses sunlight to sterilize surgical tools, which again
Speaker 1: that's that's phenomenal, and according to the articles is it
Speaker 1: uses a bucket, a pressure cooker, and one forty pocket
Speaker 1: sized mirrors, which all of which were purchased out of
Speaker 1: a Nicaraguan market, and then they built out this device
Speaker 1: that uses sun sunlight to end up heating these surgical tools,
Speaker 1: so they are sterilized because they don't have electricity, or
Speaker 1: at least not enough electricity to power a regular autoclave
Speaker 1: for sterilizing tools, and that if they were to go
Speaker 1: with one that ran on fuel, it would cost them
Speaker 1: so much money. And again we're talking about small amounts
Speaker 1: of money for most of us, but for these communities
Speaker 1: it's it's prohibitively expensive to run those sort of devices,
Speaker 1: which means that you are risking some major medical catastrophes
Speaker 1: if you do not have properly sterilized surgical tools. You know,
Speaker 1: you're talking about possibility for terrible infections that could really
Speaker 1: make patient mortality rates skyrocket. So this was a way
Speaker 1: of creating a device that doesn't depend on electricity, It
Speaker 1: just uses sunlight, which you know too, it's much easier
Speaker 1: to to to get hold of than it would for
Speaker 1: some like electricity. So that was a good example. But
Speaker 1: then the article actually goes into other things that were
Speaker 1: developed specifically for this UH, for this community and communities
Speaker 1: like it through m I T, which was this idea
Speaker 1: of medi kits. Have you read about these um I did? Yeah.
Speaker 1: UM Gomez Marquez is the program director for m I
Speaker 1: T s Innovations and International Health Program. And then the
Speaker 1: idea behind these kits and this program is that UM,
Speaker 1: these these parts and pieces are available two UH physicians
Speaker 1: and who are working in these areas, they might be
Speaker 1: able to find that, and so the point was to
Speaker 1: teach them how to use everyday stuff to make equipment
Speaker 1: that they would have. You know, they would be familiar
Speaker 1: with his physicians in the first world, they would already
Speaker 1: be familiar with that the pre may manufactured version of this.
Speaker 1: Now that he's his group wants to teach people how
Speaker 1: to take UH these parts and do it themselves on
Speaker 1: on the fly from what's on hand. And in fact,
Speaker 1: they have these medicits that come in in five different variations.
Speaker 1: So there's drug delivery, lateral flow diagnostics, lab on a chip,
Speaker 1: vital signs and agricultural prosthetics, which the agricultural prosthetics one
Speaker 1: is pretty pretty wild to me, but we'll we'll, I'll
Speaker 1: talk about that in a second. Anyway, it's talking about
Speaker 1: taking a lot of like Chris was saying, a lot
Speaker 1: of basic elements that you can find in other forms
Speaker 1: of machinery and electronics, So talking about things like um
Speaker 1: plungers or bicycle pumps or compressors, tilt sensors, that sort
Speaker 1: of stuff, these basic elements, and then teaching people different
Speaker 1: ways of putting those things together to accomplish whatever your
Speaker 1: goals are. And in act, they talked a lot about
Speaker 1: how they learned about using toys parts from toys as
Speaker 1: medical equipment, so things like a remote controlled helicopter and
Speaker 1: and removing some of the machinery from that in order
Speaker 1: to create a medical device. I talked about even there
Speaker 1: was a a an electric mechanical ferris wheel toy that
Speaker 1: could be double as a centrifuge, just with some modifications.
Speaker 1: So they talked about how you know, medical equipment, the
Speaker 1: comparable medical equipment if this country were to try and
Speaker 1: buy it would be really expensive, Like we're talking about
Speaker 1: really sophisticated medical equipment, but that you could accomplish the
Speaker 1: same outcome with these low tech approaches just by repurposing
Speaker 1: the technology, and suddenly the cost drops dramatically. So suddenly
Speaker 1: these these things that were out of reach for these
Speaker 1: medical facilities become attainable. It just means that you have
Speaker 1: to learn how to adapt this technology so they can
Speaker 1: do what you needed to do. And the article was
Speaker 1: so fascinating to me because it talks so much about
Speaker 1: how they found They discovered that there were people in
Speaker 1: the field already doing this right it had there are
Speaker 1: people who were taking equipment and saying, all right, well,
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna take this one piece of equipment I
Speaker 1: have and I'm going to alter it in this way
Speaker 1: so it can do what I did needed to do
Speaker 1: better than it can right now, because the the use
Speaker 1: cases might be very specific and the equipment might be
Speaker 1: very generalized, and so you might have a generalized piece
Speaker 1: of equipment that can do a lot of stuff, but
Speaker 1: it can't do it as well as a modified piece
Speaker 1: of equipment could. And they were starting to see how
Speaker 1: people were modifying things and improvising out in the field
Speaker 1: in order to make repairs or to make modifications to
Speaker 1: get better results. Uh. It's really really interesting and uh
Speaker 1: also really speaks a lot to human ingenuity. Well, I
Speaker 1: think I think for somebody who would be trained, um
Speaker 1: in a modern hospital to to do medical care, you
Speaker 1: would be thinking of the technology that that we have
Speaker 1: available to us. And I think that the trick is
Speaker 1: to get people to see the similarities between everyday stuff
Speaker 1: and the high tech equivalent. Um, you know the photo
Speaker 1: I I saw in the article I read about about
Speaker 1: this program. Uh, they show him using a a drinking
Speaker 1: straw for a pipette. Now you know, I would think,
Speaker 1: uh myself, and I'm not a medical professional by any
Speaker 1: stretch of the imagination, but you know, having elementary chemistry
Speaker 1: classes in high school thinking, you know, well that that's
Speaker 1: kind of you know, that's that's not as scientific and
Speaker 1: it's not as sanitary. But uh, you know, if if
Speaker 1: if you do things carefully and you know what you're doing,
Speaker 1: you can still do a lot with that technology available.
Speaker 1: And that's I think that's the point is to draw
Speaker 1: that parallels. You see, Yes, I mean you are achieving
Speaker 1: the same goal with this everyday technology that you would
Speaker 1: be with this highly precise manufactured stuff. And you can
Speaker 1: do it with what you have, and it will will
Speaker 1: help people. Um. It is worth pointing out that a
Speaker 1: lot of there are are initiatives and non governmental organizations
Speaker 1: that are repurposing uh less modern technology, you know, stuff
Speaker 1: that's five years out of date, ten years out of date,
Speaker 1: stuff that's still perfectly viable, and and sending it to
Speaker 1: to other countries that don't have access to those technologies,
Speaker 1: which is which is you know great, rather than scrapping it. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, somebody else is able to put it to use,
Speaker 1: but not everyone can use that. So these these initiatives
Speaker 1: are certainly very valuable. Yeah, And getting back to the
Speaker 1: medicate stuff, what the the team discovered was that when
Speaker 1: they started to distribute these medicates, uh, let me read
Speaker 1: a quote from the articles. As we designed the limits
Speaker 1: of our early kids carefully, but when users began to
Speaker 1: snare up on extend and test their creations, something emerged
Speaker 1: that we did not anticipate. They hacked our kits, which
Speaker 1: is what we were talking about, Like they made the
Speaker 1: kids modular, like these ideas of these modular kits so
Speaker 1: that you could create different It's almost like the medical
Speaker 1: version of our Duenos stuff. It was a very modular
Speaker 1: approach to creating medical equipment, but they were going beyond
Speaker 1: the modular approach and adding in elements that were not
Speaker 1: part of the kit, or physically altering parts of the
Speaker 1: kit in order to do what they needed it to do.
Speaker 1: And they started to see that, okay, well, with this
Speaker 1: sort of mentality, which makes perfect sense, you know that
Speaker 1: they are trying to to meet the needs of whatever
Speaker 1: their community happens to be. They said, all right, we
Speaker 1: have to think to design these kits with hacking in mind,
Speaker 1: knowing that this stuff is going to get hacked when
Speaker 1: we send it out. We have to design the kids.
Speaker 1: And they said, while it's impossible to predict every type
Speaker 1: of device a kit can deuce, 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 medicit,
Speaker 1: a flavor of medicits they had, because that was one
Speaker 1: that I thought was kind of interesting. So the kit
Speaker 1: essentially has a universal gripper. So this is a device
Speaker 1: for people who have lost a limb and need need
Speaker 1: something in order to be able to uh to to
Speaker 1: harvest crops. So it might be something so that you
Speaker 1: could pick fruit from a tree. But let's say you've
Speaker 1: lost a limb through some terrible injury or illness, and
Speaker 1: in some cases that would lead people not to to
Speaker 1: want to hire you anymore because there because you're no
Speaker 1: longer as effective. So this is a This kit came
Speaker 1: with a universal gripper made from PVC bicycle inner two
Speaker 1: and a soda bottle to attach most farm tools onto
Speaker 1: the arm or forearm of an amputee farmer. So the
Speaker 1: soda bottle was the part that fit over the whatever
Speaker 1: part of the arm remains right, so that would fit
Speaker 1: on that, and then the rest would extend from the
Speaker 1: soda bottle out ending in the universe in the universal
Speaker 1: grippers that it could pull or grip onto whatever it
Speaker 1: is you needed. And uh and said, each part of
Speaker 1: the kit follows the same three principles core device, modifier,
Speaker 1: device and consumables um And then it talked about how
Speaker 1: and in various articles talked about how people who received
Speaker 1: these kits even then would modify them further by adding
Speaker 1: in other elements like other stuff to extend the arm
Speaker 1: even further than it was already meant to go, so
Speaker 1: that it could help people reach crops that otherwise would
Speaker 1: be out of their range. So again people took the
Speaker 1: stuff that were that was distributed and made even more
Speaker 1: modifications so that it was more useful for their own
Speaker 1: daily lives. Uh, fascinating stuff. And again I mean the
Speaker 1: the ingenuity here, like people noticing that a noisemaker in
Speaker 1: a toy could be used as an alarm system for
Speaker 1: a medical device, so that when something is getting to
Speaker 1: a critical parameter, it goes noises made so that it
Speaker 1: alerts people, and things like that, like where they don't
Speaker 1: have that specialized equipment, they're building it themselves. It's really
Speaker 1: interesting to me. Yeah, well, that's that's what tech stuff
Speaker 1: 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 could 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 have this discussion. I think that I
Speaker 1: think that's a good overview of the subject. Now, there
Speaker 1: are a lot more examples that are out there. We
Speaker 1: really just covered some some pretty broad topics. But I
Speaker 1: do recommend you look into it if this is something
Speaker 1: interest you and uh, and maybe you'll find your passion.
Speaker 1: Like Adam did, who you know, he he really uprooted
Speaker 1: his entire life in order to pursue this and that's
Speaker 1: that's amazing happiness plunge. Indeed, in fact, the happiness Plunge
Speaker 1: dot com. Folks, if you want to take a look
Speaker 1: at his website because it's it's a crazy wonderful sort
Speaker 1: of thing to do. Um. I'm not sure that I
Speaker 1: am the kind of person who could who could make
Speaker 1: that commitment. I am amazed at people who do, and
Speaker 1: thankful for them as well. Well. That wraps up this discussion.
Speaker 1: If you guys have subjects, if you would like to
Speaker 1: suggest we cover, you can contact us by email. Our
Speaker 1: address is tech stuff at Discovery dot com. Or you
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Speaker 1: us a real life letter. What Yeah, fancy technology. I
Speaker 1: used Google and that's what it says. This thing is
Speaker 1: um so anyway. Uh. The address for the offices on
Speaker 1: our website how stuff works dot com. So uh, and hey,
Speaker 1: we love getting mail and the stuffy miss in history
Speaker 1: class ladies get a lot more of it than we do,
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