Tristan:
I grew up in South Africa most of my life apart from spending several of my teenaged years on a 39 foot sailing boat with my parents and brother. Living life on a boat one learns to fix and build things oneself, this lifestyle definitely got me started on learning skills and doing things myself. I guess living relatively simply like this and spending lots of my time in nature both in South Africa and sailing, also brought me closer to nature and her ways. Poverty is also a large part of South Africa’s make up, so I often saw how so much simple living “technology” was often not accessible to much of South Africa’s population. This made me realize that many of the essential technological solutions were not accessible to much of the world. And now growing up and finding that a huge aspect of my contentment within life is from living a relatively simple, low cost lifestyle close to nature, this makes me realize that simplicity is key and that material goods do not bring one contentment. So from these life experiences I have become interested in how to create simple grass roots technology that can be accessible to all. In time I hope to bring more people on board to help develop more creations along these lines.