Hundred Rabbits, Ideal Life Style | #35

Several of my friends follow Hundred Rabbits: they (two people) have been sailing and creating software, recipe, games, illustrations on their off-the-grid studio (boat). They are funded by supporters on patreon and they gave a talk at XOXO on how they changed their lifestyle to adapt to living on a boat.

It wasn’t until watching this talk that I actually got to learn more about them. (I know, I could have put into more effort in reading and watching the content they’ve put out.)

There are a lot of things that we take for granted by living in cities, things i didn’t really think about until watching this talk:

• they can’t use adobe products offline because their software need to connect to internet to check your subscription
• they create software that require little computer processing and throttle their computers’ CPU so that their electronics can be powered by solar panel
• they need to put away electronics in containers, otherwise the electronics rust easily when sailing
• any bio waste that they produce need to be stored on boat (i think)
• they take turn to sleep for 3 hours at a time because they need to monitor their sailing direction frequently
• they only use their computer when the sun is out because that’s when they can get power from the solar panel

This really really motivates me to think about living style and computers differently. 🍀 What’s the relationship we want to (and perhaps should) have with nature, and computers? When will the chase for faster, better, thinner, lighter devices slow down?

I tried to think more about what I might want as well:

• Live in the woods or on a boat for half the year, live in cities for the other half
• Dwell in off-the-grid housing (think Gates Foudnation’s toilet challenge, but applied to all appliances and housing infrastructure)
• Have (computer) devices that are modular, and single-tasked if I desire
• Devices can do file/data hand-off easily
• Maybe only one of the device can go online, the rest stays offline or local (mesh network)
• Information I’m hanlding (writing, coding, designing etc) can be easily “imported and exported” between the digital and the real world

I think there’s a future where just enough technology is what we desire, but to get there, we might need hard science and technology research.

Jonathan Blow also writes, rants, and talks about this