I understand and agree with you, and conceded that biking may have been a bad example elsewhere in the thread. My point, however, has much less to do with the details of power generation than the assertion that people will do inefficient, bone-headed, and desperate things to try and keep their phones alive in the time between running out of traditional power sources and having built reliable alternatives (the "appropriate-tech solar and biomass and wind and hydro" you mention). I am not suggesting that these things are good ideas. They are silly and their suggestion was meant to be humorous, not instructive.
Not the crank ones, personally, but I have used the ones you shake like a shake weight. The generated runtime is longer than the time you have to shake them, but it's not good.
I fucking love low-tech and no-tech magazine
I understand and agree with you, and conceded that biking may have been a bad example elsewhere in the thread. My point, however, has much less to do with the details of power generation than the assertion that people will do inefficient, bone-headed, and desperate things to try and keep their phones alive in the time between running out of traditional power sources and having built reliable alternatives (the "appropriate-tech solar and biomass and wind and hydro" you mention). I am not suggesting that these things are good ideas. They are silly and their suggestion was meant to be humorous, not instructive.
Have you ever used one of those hand-powered crank flashlights?
Not the crank ones, personally, but I have used the ones you shake like a shake weight. The generated runtime is longer than the time you have to shake them, but it's not good.
From my experience, I'm pretty sure no one uses the hand-powered ones more than once or twice before getting sick of them.