On Wed, Oct 7, 2009 at 9:08 AM, Niels Blaauw <niels_at_nibla.nl> wrote: > > > Back to the topic though: How technology has changed kayaking. I could go > on for hours, so I'll limit myself to taking pictures. > > I still ask paddling friends about their experiences with cameras (Dave Kruger recommended the Canon my wife finally bought after I vacillated for weeks) but Niels is right about the changes technology has wrought on the kayaking world. Not the least of which affects the kayaks themselves. It's no secret that I have several kayaks. But when I look out there I see a kevlar state-of-the-art kayak (at least in production techniques... it's a Mariner II designed a few years back but still, I think, very modern) next to a fiberglass kayak next to a plastic kayak next to a skin-on-frame kayak. That pretty much fills out the history of the production of kayaks, huh? There are few things less natural than kevlar and polyester resin. And even the SOF has a nylon skin impregnated with polyurethane. I would have gone more natural but the seal population in Moses Lake has, alas, declined precipitously. With the current focus on Greenland techniques (and I am a big fan) even that has progressed to the use of kevlar and carbon fiber in paddle construction. Precious few carbon fiber rolls washed up on Greenland's beaches, I'm thinking, but you just can't stop progress. Even so, modern life has mostly changed in the details. I theorized once that a person transported from USA1900 to USA1950 would find a world utterly unfamiliar. Everything would have changed. The transition would have been incredibly difficult. Radio, television, airplanes, telephones, trucks and cars, houses with heat and a/c, electric lights everywhere, jet planes, etc. But a person from the USA in 1950 to the USA in 2000 would have fit in pretty easily. The details of life had changed but the basic culture would be pretty easy to fit into. Cameras are different but the basic premise remains the same. And our fiberglass kayaks look a *lot* better. Telephones in homes would not be that strange and cell phones would just be an extension (after all, they had "walkie talkies" in the 40s). Still, the devil is in those details. We don't fly personal airplanes to work (in fact, there are fewer personal airplanes now than in the 1950s when airports had lines of Cessnas, Pipers, Taylorcrafts, Bonanzas and the others tied down) like magazines predicted; and are still, incredibly, predicting. Goretex is one of those details... outerwear wouldn't look all that different to a 1950s person. The way it works is revolutionary but it's not obvious. I expect "progress" to become even more granular in the future. Nanotechnology, for instance, could affect us in ways we can't imagine now (some of which, according to at least one famous technologist, might not be all that good for us). I think energy will be the biggest change my grandchildren will face whether it will be fusion, efficient and inexpensive solar, hydrogen or something else... it will almost certainly not be petro-chemical. By then we will be reserving *that* for the manufacture of even better kayaks. Craig Jungers (I use vi) Moses Lake, WA www.nwkayaking.net *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List - Any opinions or suggestions expressed here are solely those of the writer(s). You must assume the entire responsibility for reliance upon them. All postings copyright the author. Submissions: PaddleWise_at_PaddleWise.net Subscriptions: PaddleWise-request_at_PaddleWise.net Website: http://www.paddlewise.net/ ***************************************************************************Received on Thu Oct 08 2009 - 10:16:14 PDT
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