Eiffel Over

Tag: affordances

  • Potential energy navigation – or not pedalling downhill

    Potential energy navigation – or not pedalling downhill

    How driving an e-car has changed the way I think about driving, cycling and our relationship to the landscape through which we travel.

    I have recently started driving an electric vehicle from a car club. I have always understood one of the benefits of electric vehicles being that when you slow down you can convert some of your kinetic energy back into potential energy. In practice you can see this happening when you drive. Motoring along a flat or uphill road, the dashboard display shows a steady flow of current from the battery to the motor. And when you crest a hill and take your foot off the accelerator, the display shows the current flowing the other way. 

    But this engine-braking effect only gives you a slow rate of deceleration. If you need to slow down more quickly then you need to use the old-fashioned breaks, converting that kinetic energy to heat – which is lost. 

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  • Creating contours in the flat landscape of lockdown

    Creating contours in the flat landscape of lockdown

    In the midst of lockdown we have created a new household tradition that brings a highlight to the week. On Saturday nights we dress for dinner, enjoy our meal, watch Strictly on our new TV, and then push back the furniture and dance. 

    With the household locked down, one day could easily look like the rest. To use Matthew Crawford‘s  language, the ‘affordances’ of one day look exactly like the rest: there are a fewer physical contours that shape how different parts of the week feel now that we are always at home. So you have to create that structure for yourself.

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  • The horizon of existence | surveillance capitalism | the return of analogue skills

    The horizon of existence | surveillance capitalism | the return of analogue skills

    It’s hard to know where to start. So much has changed in the last fortnight and there is so much that I feel compelled to write about. But now that our house has also become a remote workplace, a homeschool and playground and locus for all entertainment and time-passing activities, it is hard to find the time to write in an ordered way, so I will capture things as they emerge and look to see the patterns over time. I hope you will bear with me, reader. On my mind today:

    • The shrinking horizon of existance
    • Surveillance capitalism and Analogue Skills
    • Everyone is the same distance away
    • Mourning friction
    • A great slowing

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