Will the future be human-powered?

// added November 17, 2008 // 1 comment //
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purplefox

more from Green:

http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2008/11/will_the_future_be_humanp.html

See, with all these human hamsters running along in gyms across the country, I've often wandered why something like this isn't being done more widely already.

Anyway, it sounds like there's hope, with news that this month a human-powered gym is opening in Portland, Oregon, and in September the human-powered 'sustainable dance club' in Rotterdam, Netherlands. In Hong Kong, the California Fitness gym is exploiting the muscle pumping power of its patrons for power, while Club Surya in London is the latest gym to get in on the human power generation thing.

Apparently the main problem about things like this really taking off is that we're actually not all that efficient - make things too hard for us and we'd probably be happier sitting in front of the TV with a bag of chips, so for human power to really take off beyond being a clever marketing ploy, either we'd have to get a lot fitter, or appliances will have to get a helluva lot more efficient.
  1. groups:
    Green,   Bike
  2. tags:
    Green,  People,  Energy,  Fitness,  4 more

1 comment // Will the future be human-powered?

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