What Air Conditioning Can Teach Us About Innovation and Laziness (vice.com)

In a think piece for Vice's Motherboard Ernie Smith argues that the invention of air conditioning in 1902 has had a big impact on the innovation we've made since. Smith, citing several studies and articles on the matter, states that it is because of air conditioners that we have things like skyscrapers, clean rooms for building advanced computer chips, shopping malls, and multiplexes. But on the other hand, air conditioners have somewhat limited our creativity in home and office designing. From the article:See, prior to the air conditioner reaching homes around the country, architects had to think more creatively about keeping people cool when options were more limited. This meant taking advantage of breezes, room design, and dimensional layout in a way that maximized the heat when it was necessary kept things cool when it wasn't. And it meant taking advantage of foliage around the home to build in some natural shade, as well as to build porches, which were often much cooler than the insides of homes during warm days.The article, among other things, also mentions that we are currently looking for ways to curtail the energy wastage that incurs because of ACs. But Smith points out that it took us a while -- generations, actually -- before we started to see a problem and began working on it. From the article:"One of the many ways in which we have become cognitively lazy is to accept our initial impression of the problem that [we encounter]. Once we settle on an initial perspective we don't seek alternative ways of looking at the problem," author Michael Michalko wrote. "Like our first impressions of people, our initial perspective on problems and situations are apt to be narrow and superficial. We see no more than we expect to see based on our past experiences in life, education and work." [...] It's hard to even get mad at architects who chose simple efficiency over complexity, or (to highlight a contemporary example) early carmakers that went with gasoline instead of something better for the environment. Because of human nature, it just makes sense that despite all the other advantages that came with air conditioning, the more challenging things that came with the invention -- the fact that conservation and efficiency still have their place -- didn't initially get their due.

Comments

How people stayed cool before a/c

[QuietLagoon]

As summer heat builds, more people will rely on air conditioning units to keep cool.

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However, before air conditioning existed, people had to be creative when trying to stay comfortable in sweltering conditions.

Here are five different ways that people across the United States beat the heat in the 1800s and early 1900s.

Re:How people stayed cool before a/c

[Anonymous Coward]

Nice BuzzFeed-esque clickbait... What is advertising for 500, Alex?

Per your linked article, however, I do find most of those options to be non-solutions. Ice blocks have nothing to do with the design of a house, and as stated, those were not usually a per-house item, but more of a community thing. While I promote building community relations, this doesn't promote productivity in the home. The exact same statement applies also to the water fountains, and napping in the shade. As far as front porches go, I think those are actually quite nice, given you don't need a drafting table or CNC- but if it's plain laptop-able work, then rock on! Finally, high ceilings may be nice... when you're not in an apartment.

My actual thoughts on the OP are that we should find a way to reduce the running time of the AC units, while still understanding that they were incorporated into our lives for a number of reasons, and shouldn't be taken for granted. Increasing shade coverage over the house, having the rooms you want the coolest kept in the lower levels but near a furnace... engineering has simple and complex solutions, but they are there. I just think it's wrong to demonise the use of AC because those solutions are not implemented.

Stupid article is stupid

[Anonymous Coward]

We're not "cognitively lazy" because we didn't seek alternatives to AC.

We don't WANT alternatives to AC.

The simple fact is that one AC'd room is still cooler than a patio with a breeze in the summer.
Like lamps it allows us to be more productive in the hot months when generally people (in New York for example) would go to the Catskills where it was generally cooler weather.

AC isn't efficient. Well duh. Neither is heating but I don't see this cognitively lazy researcher arguing against reduced uses of heaters in the winter months. We accept these costs of part of living and they HAVE been made more efficient. Same reason we can't get off of oil - it's THE most efficient fuel source in terms of energy output potential per unit.

Now, frankly, I think it's be cool (heh) if each house had its own, sealed, micro nuclear reactor to provide heat and power AC and homes... But somehow I think mr "cognitive lazy" here would object to that as well...

Windcatchers

[kosmosik]

Well people tried to deal with heat in architecture since like 1000 years B.C.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Just look for clues in architecture of nations living in constantly hot climate.

AC is OK when you need it (in car f.e.) but I do prefer other cooling methods if it can be achieved.

The Romans had air conditioning

[Solandri]

A really clever system using a pipe buried undergorund to cool air, and a heated air duct on top of the home to draw air out, so the lower pressure would draw air through the buried pipe. The surrounding ground would cool the air as it traveled through the pipe, and when it came up in your home it would be substantially cooler than the ambient air temperature.

We're starting to adopt the same concept again in newer homes. Turns out dirt tends to stay cooler than the air in summer, and warmer than the air in winter. So you just bury a bunch of water pipes undergorund and use that as your heat sink/source for your heat pump. In summer it cools the home by pumping the heat underground into the dirt, in winter it heats the home by pumping the heat out from the dirt underground.

Nonsense

[argStyopa]

"Cognitive Laziness" isn't the same thing as "refusing to waste time on problems you don't need to solve because there's a ready solution at-hand".

You might as well say that we've become 'cognitively lazy' because we don't bother going out to stalk, hunt, and kill game, instead just 'lazily' going to pick up food from the grocery store.

In other words, this whole 'cognitive laziness' thing is a weakly warmed-over Victorian social Darwinistic argument that "modern conveniences make humans lazy".

Re:Nonsense editorializing

[dwywit]

Unfortunately some architects focus on the aesthetics and not practicalities. We had an architect from a colder climate re-design our community centre, and he refused to put in *any* active cooling - no AC, no fans, no ducted exhaust. He seemed to think that the high ceiling with louvres at the top, and more at the bottom, would provide sufficient ventilation during summer. He even removed the existing ceiling fans because they "obscured the decorative plasterwork". When some elderly folk started fainting during performances, the committee rapidly put the fans back in.

The point is, architects don't always design for practicality, and that can become expensive later. This guy didn't do any research about about how much heat 200+ bodies generate, how much heat stage lights generate (fortunately they were recently replaced by LED units), how much worse that feels during hot and humid weather, and what's needed to pump that heat away.

Our fault for choosing him, of course - I dare say the committee was blinded by his awards.