Austrian designer Victor Gruen recognized that as the American main street dissolved, people would need a civic place to go, somewhere to be with others. He designed the shopping mall. As marketers hired psychologists to find new ways for maximizing consumer spending, videos of people that entered these malls were analyzed and an amazing phenomena was discovered. The Gruen Transfer.

The Gruen transfer refers to the moment when a consumer enters a shopping mall, and, surrounded by an intentionally confusing layout, loses track of their original intentions. Spatial awareness of their surroundings play a key role, as does the surrounding sound and music. The effect of the transfer is marked by a slower walking pace and glazed eyes. [From Wikipedia]

Gruen himself despised exploitation of this technique but it was great for business. It was encouraged and expounded upon many times over. Now our built environments are designed to invoke that Gruen Transfer as much as possible. The Transfer is imposed so frequently it has transcended the characteristic slow walking pace and glazed eyes, it has become a permanent state when walking the street. An almost perpetual Zombie Mode. Sure, I go into Zombie Mode too, we all do, we have to, to protect our psyche from the speed of the thoughts induced. I experienced this need more in the US than in Canada but it is still very prevalent here.

Neil Kramer’s latest blog post on The Cleaver included a possible explanation for the origins of the perpetual Zombie Mode I see around me:

You can see it in people’s faces. They settle for that which they know to be deficient and unfulfilling. The rationale is that some contact is better than no contact. This is particularly prevalent in intimate relationships. When humans are fundamentally disconnected from themselves and each other, they are vulnerable to the insidious gravitational pull of the mainstream cultural paradigm. They get all normal.

At the primary level, those who choose not to be the architect of their own consciousness, and therefore disclaim their own daily existence, are anchoring the density of the construct with every recycled meme that passes their lips and every electro-chemical notion that fires across their frontal lobe. They are hungry pacman ghosts roaming the sepulchral corridors of unreality, forever repeating the same corrosive patterns, unable to satiate themselves on any level. The virus of renunciation consumes its own host.

The only way to offset the muted but incessant background pain derived from this way of living, is to embrace normality. To watch TV and resonate along with its frequency of ordinariness and indifference. To consume. To buy fake products, fake food, fake music. To wear cheap clothes and running shoes that are derived directly from the blood of economic slaves. This is a karmic declaration. And should the inner self spontaneously break through and find its voice amid this toxicity, then with the utmost urgency, the mind must be plunged into the low-resonance, high-density media swamp. When the mind sucks in vulgarity, regression and ignoble deeds, the psychological pain momentarily subsides as the spirit retreats far from the centre of our being.

Why do we pursue the things we do? We want to achieve happiness right? Kramer continues,

People generally want to feel happiness in their day to day lives. Yet what is this elusive state that arises and vanishes with such apparent capriciousness? It is a simple thing. Happiness is a frequency attached to dharmic function. It arises when spirit is aligned – when there is authentic being, gnosis, true creative expression and expansion of awareness. It is the spontaneous acknowledgement of conscious presence. I am here and everything is OK. That is the open gladness that dissolves all illusory negativity in an instant. It is free and is not dependent on anyone or anything. It can come amid great solemnity, pandemonium, even misery, and just as easily it may surface in the middle of philosophy, creativity, intimacy and play.

Making happiness a destination in itself is a mark of deep unconsciousness; a sign that life is off course.

I’m thinking that we are all running around seeking happiness and by doing so we are forgetting that happiness isn’t a final state. Happiness is a by-product of the authentic expression of ourselves. Since we aren’t reaching that happy end-state the only response is Zombie Mode. It grows ever more permanent each time it is imposed until it become a voluntary response.

Once you’ve met someone who isn’t in perpetual Zombie Mode, you’ll notice that he or she is very different. Maybe you won’t know exactly what is different but you’ll know something’s there that’s not quite “normal”. And maybe after thinking about it a while, you’ll see that individual was on a path of authentic expression… and that’s the kind of realization which can truly change the world.

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Post tags: humanity

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Post tags: science

First Theorem: “The Dismal Theorem” If the only ultimate check on the growth of population is misery, then the population will grow until it is miserable enough to stop its growth.

Second Theorem: “The Utterly Dismal Theorem” This theorem states that any technical improvement can only relieve misery for a while, for so long as misery is the only check on population, the [technical] improvement will enable population to grow, and will soon enable more people to live in misery than before. The final result of [technical] improvements, therefore, is to increase the equilibrium population which is to increase the total sum of human misery.

Third Theorem: “The moderately cheerful form of the Dismal Theorem” Fortunately, it is not too difficult to restate the Dismal Theorem in a moderately cheerful form, which states that if something else, other than misery and starvation, can be found which will keep a prosperous population in check, the population does not have to grow until it is miserable and starves, and it can be stably prosperous. Until we know more, the Cheerful Theorem remains a question mark. Misery we know will do the trick.

Eric Sevareid’s Law acts as a corollary – The Chief Cause of Problems is Solutions

(via Miguel Barbosa’s interview of Albert Bartlett)

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Post tags: economic growth, economics, humanity

First the abstract,

It is argued that drug consumption, most commonly alcohol drinking, can be a technology to give up some control over one’s actions and words. It can be employed by
trustworthy players to reveal their type. Similarly alcohol can function as a “social lubricant” and faciliate type revelation in conversations. It is shown that both separating and pooling equilibria can exist; as opposed to the classic results in the literature, a pooling equilibrium is still informative. Drugs which allow a gradual loss of control by appropriate doses and for which moderate consumption is not addictive are particularly suitable because the consumption can be easily observed and reciprocated and is unlikely to occur out of the social context. There is a tradeoff between the efficiency gains due to the signaling effect and the loss of productivity associated with intoxication. Long run evolutionary equilibria of the type distribution are considered. If coordination on an exclusive technology is efficient, social norms or laws can raise efficiency by legalizing only one drug.

And my favorite line from the paper:

If alcohol can be used to give others better information about one’s personality, the social consumption of alcohol can benefit those who would like to honestly reveal their type.

(via Tyler Cowen)

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Post tags: behavioral economy, economics, humanity

Even though I’m sufficiently aware of the information behind Peak Oil and the oil age’s connection to rapid global population growth, I found Hartmann’s summary of this topic to be one of the best introductions available. Representing the world as varying forms of ancient sunlight is a powerful analogy that can introduce even the most encapsulated thinkers to holistic systems thinking. It reminded me of the idea that innovation can either be built on success of the past or borrowed from the future. Hartmann provides all the facts and figures necessary to demonstrate that the majority of our current lifestyle is dependent on the ancient sunlight of the past, stored in dense forms like oil and coal. Our depletion of this resource has borrowed even the most basic support systems from the future.

Yet, how can we be in a situation that is so dire yet everything looks so good? (Even though a lot of this has changed since Hartmann updated the book in 2004, because in 2009/2010 things are starting to look quite bad.) Ancient Sunlight explains that our modern industrial civilization is living off its startup capital, like a company that is building a lavish office without pushing a sustainable business model. We are blind to problems underlying economic systems and infrastructure because we don’t have to as long as we are growing, much like the enthusiasm behind a ponzi scheme before it falls apart. The severity of this situation cannot be iterated enough. An example is in human slavery, the dense form of energy we have now gives us access to hundreds of energy slaves that can drive our cars and light our houses, without this it would take many humans to do equivalent work. Coupled with collapses in biodiversity, water shortages, widespread desertification because of climate changes, and massive cutbacks in forest cover are presenting our species with a decade of significant change afoot.

Analyzing how we got here is a useful way to build a model for the future. By looking at historical examples of global cultures Ancient Sunlight draws a distinction between Younger Cultures and Older Cultures. Hartmann explains how younger cultures are warlike, agressive and obsessed with superiority while older cultures are filled with respect, integration and conservation. A poignant example is how the two cultures handle diversity, younger cultures seeking integration and dissolution of ” the other” while older cultures respect and encourage individual expressions of a cultural identity.

The younger culture is a culture of control, gaining power through its current incarnations with the powerful drugs of television and general entertainment, just two of the things that completely disconnect us from our natural environment and our birthright as humans. Hartmann provides an all encompassing look at the stories we tell ourselves about our culture, i.e. that we are separate from the world, that it is our destiny to subdue the world, get yours before anyone else can. Constrast these examples with the older culture stories, i.e that we are part of the world, that we must cooperate with the rest of nature.

Much of this comes from our view that natives were lazy and stupid, falsehoods that are overturned by even a cursory study of the accounts from ethnographers, whether of brilliant pharmacological solutions to illness in the Amazon or of the technology of the !Kung tribes which allowed them to work less than 20 hours a week. Cooperation is revealed as the basis for a new paradigm, a better society encompassed by this statement from Dwight D. Eisenhower, “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.”

Ultimately Hartmann concludes that our private practices of raising awareness and informing ourselves of these problems can lead to an empowered group ready to provide leadership as our industrial civilization loses its control. After practicing years of meditation myself, I couldn’t agree more on a better way to start. Quiet time for reflection has led me to immense personal and universal truths. After reading The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight I can see this practice has done the same for Hartmann.

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Post tags: economic growth, economy, humanity, peak oil, technological program

Renewable energy is often touted as the future because it has lower CO2 emissions or “can solve our energy scarcity problems because it will replace oil”. Unfortunately, renewable energy is far from solving those massive problems. Solar, wind, geothermal, tidal, etc… all require tremendous amounts of oil to get their infrastructure up and running, emitting CO2 in the process. However, I’ve lost interest in the climate change problem because it is just a subset of an industrial society that’s completely dependent on high net energy production of oil, so I’ll just focus on energy scarcity for now.

I’ve been really impressed Jeff Vail’s analysis of this renewable energy problem I’ve alluded to above. In this November 9th recap of his 2009 APSO presentation, Jeff defines the “Renewables Gap” and presents some startling numbers.

I’m working on renewable energy technology in my graduate school program at University of British Columbia but seeing the resources required for production of high-tech energy solutions is disconcerting. The amount of energy required to run the microscopes, testing equipment, and chemical synthesis of materials may not be possible in a world of energy scarcity. Energy innovation may come to a halt because we can’t afford to devote energy to it in a decade or so. Realizing that this is a possible outcome, we’ll need to use current technology when defining the Renewables Gap.

To develop a renewable infrastructure that continues with the infinite growth paradigm using current technologies may be impossible. Jeff Vail determines that, “between 80% and 90% of the total energy ever required to build, operate, and maintain these systems must be invested up front.”

Additionally, Jeff reminds us that, “these renewables produce ELECTRICITY, not oil. We’re talking here about using them to replace oil—let’s talk about conversion issues. How many GWh are needed to replace 1 mbpd of oil production? A straight BTU-to-BTU conversion: replacing 1 million barrels of oil per day production, or 365 million barrels of oil per year, equates to 70.78 Giga-Watt-Years. Clearly, however, oil and electricity are not the same thing.”

Jeff also draws on the fact that quickly ramping up renewable production also requires a significant investment in our transmission grid. I’ll focus on solar energy because that’s what I’m familiar with from the utility industry but all forms of renewable energy production face similar challenges. Solar power sounds like a great idea until you realize that the sun goes down at night and that cloud cover produces a very spotty generation profile. If clouds frequently cover the sun, the energy passed on to the grid can swing back and forth dramatically, ruining the precision engineering balances on power factor and other variables that keep our lights from going off. Mass deployment of solar photovoltaics, requires mass deployment of large-scale storage that can smooth these voltage swings, preventing damage on local transformers. Unfortunately, while the cost of photovoltaic modules has decreased over the last decade, cost effective utility scale storage is far from ready for mass deployment.

Jeff investigates the amount of oil we’ll need to invest in renewables to offset oil production rate decline in two varying scenarios. The two scenarios being an optimistic 5% rate of annual oil production decline and a more realistic 10% rate of annual oil production decline. I’ll quote the numbers he uses for a 5% decline rate because the numbers for a 10% decline rate are quite scary.

“In this [5% annual decline] scenario, to mitigate the year-1 decline in net energy from oil, we’d need to invest 467 GWy of energy in year one without any production in return—that’s the equivalent of almost 7 million barrels per day. Then in year two it’s about 130 GWy more invested than cumulative production to that point, or about a 2 million barrel per day deficit. Not until year-three will the cumulative renewable generation be more than the investment deficit for that year—meaning that not until year 3 will we begin to have surplus energy available to mitigate the actual decline in oil production (which by this point leaves us 12 million barrels per day behind the peak oil decline curve.” That’s the “Renewables Gap.”

I’m skeptical that our society would be willing to invest that much energy in renewable infrastructure growth. Quite simply, our global system has outgrown the energy available to maintain it. This means that, as Gail Tverberg concludes in his recent essay for The Oil Drum,

Efficiency and Smart Growth are “Brain” technologies, as opposed to the “Brawn” of traditional and new energy sources. As such, their application requires long-term planning and thought. Cheap energy has led to a culture where we prefer to solve problems by simply applying more brawn. As our fossil fuel brawn fades away, we will have to rely on our brains once again if we hope to maintain anything like our current level of economic activity.

“Green” energy is also highly land intensive. Some of the most cost effective options for reducing our dependence on fossil fuels are also highly land intensive. A recent article on The Enterprise Irregulars covers the issue of the coming Green Sprawl which will devastate the carrying capacity of our ecosystem to support humans. CO2 emission reduction strategies will likely take us down the road of tearing up the prime farm land we’ll need to survive an energy crisis.

I’m currently focusing on the brawn solutions and we’ll see where that takes me over the next few years. However, as things start to unravel, I’m preparing to focus my research on the brain solutions Tverberg advocates. I’ll hope the global society we’ve built can pick up on that trend before things would become too dire for policy to make a difference.

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Post tags: energy, net energy, peak oil

The most reasonable estimates suggest that, given a crash program and the best foreseeable technologies, renewable sources can probably provide the United States with around 15% of the energy it currently gets from fossil fuels. Since every good and service in the economy is the product of energy, it’s a very rough but functional approximation to say that in a green economy, every American will have to get by on the equivalent of 15% of his or her current income. Take a moment to work through the consequences in your own life; if you made $50,000 in 2009, for example, imagine having to live on $7,500 in 2010. That’s quite a respectable income by Third World standards, but it won’t support the kind of lifestyle that the vast majority of Americans, across the political spectrum, believe is theirs by right.

Greer’s words are a very apt and shocking demonstration of the new world we’re facing. And while I don’t think there is evidence to support the expectation that we’ll need to go from 100% current energy consumption to 15% current energy consumption overnight, the change will likely be rather rapid, over a quickly approaching 10-20 year period. Will the expectation we’ve been sold of a leisurely retirement with independence from others through accumulated wealth dissipate with ease? I doubt it. Obama wouldn’t ramp up operations in Afghanistan, in my opinion, unless he’d seen the same intel that the Bush administration had. The intel that shows the shocking reality of the coming energy scarcity age. The USA isn’t going down without a fight and seeing that happen, its easy to expect this next decade to be quite messy.

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Post tags: economy, energy, peak oil, united states

The Vanishing of a Species?

While I’ve read many books on the problems facing humanity, Geologist Dr. Peter Greetner’s The Vanishing of  a Species? was a unique experience. Published posthumously by his son Nick, The Vanishing of a Species? is a look at the problems of the mid to late 1970s that ironically we still face almost forty years later.  In dealing with the destructive nature of our actions as human beings, Greetner summarizes problems facing our species and clearly states that without a revolution in the human approach to problems, we are headed for a massive culling in population and maybe even extinction. Not exactly cheerful stuff. I’m still far from convinced that humanity will perish from the Earth, however I’m not too optimistic about civilization.

This book is quite valuable because of the approach Dr. Greetner took to academic culture and its role in the current crises. Beginning with a recap of C.P. Snow’s “The Two Cultures”, the fundamental lecture that defined the problems with modern education’s division of  the humanities and the sciences, Greetner builds off this foundation by addressing issues within the North American educational model.  His recommendations are relevant to today’s academic society and his critiques are still pertinent. Core to Greetner’s commentary on education is that the focus on specialization causes and exacerbates modern challenges. Because our predicaments are largely a result of lacking awareness,  few ever gain a broad perspective because they lack an all-encompassing education. Academics are largely unwilling to debate the relevance of their work and this lack of dialogue is reducing the effectiveness of university research. In essence, it all starts with the role of the individual students in the university system failing to understand that being “educated” is more a state of mind than the result of receiving a piece of paper after four or more years of academic study. I was particularly receptive to Greetner’s comments on engineers, “Engineers…are asked to only complete a few outside options in order to gradate. That the concept does not work is amply demonstrated by the thousands of university graduates in North America whose interest in anything beyond their specialty and sports is virtually nil.” The focus on specialization is not only intellectually lazy but has become dangerous.

Much of the book reads like an angry blog, bordering between rant and enlightenment, each chapter only a few pages long. The reason for the frustration is clear however, even today Greetner’s approaches have been ignored and we suffer because of it. Regardless of the overall tone, I had a hard time putting this book down, it was immensely entertaining… at least as entertaining as books about the extinction of humanity can be.

Greetner’s manuscripts were published, as his son stated, without touching his Father’s original words. This is where the book meets its major downfall. The chapter on women in society is not only offensive but undermines the conversation started by the book. The chapter on China is completely outdated. While the inclusion of  these sections provide a complete portrait of Greetner’s views they ultimately linger like a bad aftertaste.

I’m afraid we may never see Greetner’s revolution in human thought before civilization falls apart but even as things unravel, books like The Vanishing of a Species? are an important contribution to our heritage as a species. By knowing that even in 1970s people were seriously considering the effects of over-reliance on oil, peak access to energy and environmental depletion we have an invaluable legacy for generations of the future. I hear Dr. Greetner loud and clear when he’s telling us that he saw the problems we’re only now recognizing and tried to raise awareness of them through his teaching and writings.  Acknowledging these problems now may be as Charles Eisenstein says in Ascent of Humanity, like a drunk’s moments of clarity on the way down, but at the least we can create a legacy our  future society can build upon.

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Post tags: humanity, modern education

Indra's Net by Robin Robertson

Self-transformation is the most important challenge we face as humans. The growing complexity of modern crises require a new breed of human thinking that few are willing to embrace.  Because of these challenges, I was intrigued by the idea of Dr. Robin Robertson’s Indra’s Net, combining the mathematics of chaos theory and the mythological language of alchemy to serve as models for an individual transformational path. Few embark on this path and many who do are bogged down by approaches that are too often steeped with pseudoscience or empty metaphors. In walking my own path, I’ve tried to focus on readings that pay special attention to the development of the higher self while avoiding the language of  “self-help” or scientific concepts evoked with little understanding. Much of the mystique surrounding our modern perception of alchemy is primarily because we view alchemy as a primitive ill-informed version of chemistry. By dispelling this myth early on in Indra’s Net, Robertson removed my concerns that his book would be innocuous commentary on the human condition decorated with fanciful mysticism. Even Isaac Newton, who viewed the scientific world as one of absolutes, used alchemical models to reveal the dynamic processes defining our world. Alchemy has always been a process of transforming Man, a constant process of refining the individual to reveal the “golden” potential, not transforming Pb into Au. While alchemy was an ancient method of modeling the dynamics of the human condition, chaos theory is the modern equivalent of modeling dynamic realities. When combined, alchemy and chaos math reveal many nuances critical to our growth as we seek to express our authentic human nature. The use of  mythological symbols are highly relevant because they represent the mechanisms of the unconscious as much now as they did in the past.

I was particularly struck by Robertson’s description of the uroboros, the deeply ingrained archetype of the snake eating its own tail, to represent the process of feeding back information into the individual for a constant transformational process. The uroboros represents that the end is contained within the beginning, all too often we transform over a lifetime to find our inner child looking right back at us in the mirror. Additionally, when examining feedback as a model for transformation we see that there is no short way to subtend the process, we must work over the same issues a a deeper and deeper level.  By seeking to transcend our current broken state we fail to probe the depths of human existence. Trying to amputate the dark sides of our nature we are like a rope that continually cuts its end off, the rope gets shorter and shorter, and as a human we become shallower and shallower. The full spectrum of human existence must be appreciated in its entire context.

the uroboros

In addition to feedback, Indra’s Net adapts emergence onto the path of personal challenge. Striving to adapt our lives to specific equations for success is a common focus for modern humans. Go to college + get a job + gain skills = make more and more money. Yet at some undetermined point everything can, and usually does change without any specific reason. Building a network of probability through interactions with an external world only increases the opportunity for our inner self to emerge at a spontaneous point. If we think life will continue down a pre-determined route, ignoring the little dissatisfaction accumulating underneath, they eventually emerge into a devastating climax. This manifests commonly as the stereotypical midlife crisis in American culture but we all undergo many such crises (but at smaller magnitudes) on a frequent basis.

I was impressed with Robertson’s writing and the succinctness of his message, at 147 pages Indra’s Net covers all its bases but doesn’t drone on unnecessarily like many books in the genre of self-work. At a time when many in the US have opportunities to re-evaluate their presence at 40+ hour a week jobs where making money means doing something with little fulfillment, Indra’s Net can provide the tools for recognizing the inner self.

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Post tags: humanity, transformation

Sander’s talk started by covering the history of innovation. By adapting the environment and the brain to tackle new challenges, humans are one of the greatest success stories in nature’s history, all because we can adapt and innovate. Eventually, humans began focusing their innovation centers in cities. Cities are not more energy efficient but are better innovation engines.

This centralization comes with a requirement: as centralization increases, the rate of innovation that must occur to support the structure has to increase. Food and energy must be brought from further and futher away because the ecological footprint of the city grows. Once fossil resources became harnessed, innovation became fundamentally necessary to support the collapse of society. As more of our society depended on oil for growth, that growth continued because of innovation. Technology has allowed us to harvest more oil faster and from more remote places. This supported more population growth and further innovation. At this point in the talk Sander makes a shocking claim: perhaps innovation is the greatest ponzi scheme of all, the rate of innovation must increase at all times to prevent the collapse of civilization.

And the more I think about it, the more I think he is right. How could I prove him wrong? If we stopped innovating, would we destroy humanity with the state of our current technology? All signs point to yes, especially in the United States.

Sander continues by pointing out two views of humanity and its relation to nature.

1) In the cohesion of nature, strangeness and force are emphasized. That change is attributed to nature but people are passive and resistive to change. Nature and change are viewed as dangerous because they are outside the realm of human control.

The opposing view is that,

2) Humans are overly agressive, forcing change on our environment to support our war-like culture and nature is passive receiver of our exploitation.

These two views interplay to create a critical approach to human decision making: natural dangers are exaggerated, human dangers are underplayed.

This can be seen in the climate change debate. We fear the response of nature to our actions but ignore the many other problems humanity is creating through our technological program.

Sander continues by stating the inevitable result of technological innovation. We intervene more and more in our environment, thinking that we reducing our risks but all we do is change the spectrum of risks, not the overall quantity of risks. The end state is that we lose control because we lose the ability to understand the complex chain of events resulting from our interventions.

Human changes are rapid and shallow attempt to replace and begin to outweigh the natural changes which are slow yet all encompassing. Risk spectrums shift over time with respect to their environments. We tend to overemphasize the frequent risks, try to reduce them and substitue completely unknown risks at larger scale over a longer time period. This accumulation of long term, large scale risks build up and collapse the civilization.

At some point, Sander believes that every social system will go out of control. The system pushes itself into a trap, the cost of problem solving goes up, flexibility goes down, the outcome is included in the way it was started, our exploitation of our environment creates the weaknesses we must contend with at the end.

Oil has provided us a shockingly stable environment but this environment has reduced our ability to adapt. Now, we can only innovate within the structure we create for ourselves, aggravating the situation even further, reducing our ability to break with the overarching problems. Climate change isn’t bad for humanity, it is bad for the status quo, our social structure. The fall of the Roman Empire resulted primarily because they used up all their wood, their primary energy source, shipping it from further and further away. This collapse was not a “solution”, it was simply the inability to maintain innovation at the rate necessary to extract new energy sources. After the fall of Rome people migrated from urban areas to the rural environment. The city was the keeper of information, the archivist was the maintainer of civilization. Perhaps we are in a slightly better position now because the internet helps us maintain our global knowledge, yet is even more dependent on energy than the city.

Sander stated that he thought the urban situation will explode, it is fragile and we invest more and more in our cities and less in a resilient rural environment.

He shared my sentiment: optimistic for humanity, pessimistic for society.

So what if we can accelerate our innovation to maintain the pace required to avoid collapse? Unfortunately that acceleration also rapidly adds up in unintended consequences. Technology must be implemented at faster and faster rates to avoid collapse but prevent the long term viewpoint. Many immediate problems add up and then you can’t focus on the long term problems.

Sander compared our situation to a tribe in the Southern hHghlands that saw deforestation and decided to counter with a ceremony of slaughtered pigs. The tribe raised continually more and pigs to slaughter, converting the entire valley to mud. Eventually the pigs piled up and died of disease. The land was ruined because of the mud and the tribe was left in the mess they’d created.

Hardly a mainstream view, it is much more attractive to spout the promises of nanotechnology and artificial intelligence. Assuming that rates of technological innovation will continue or exponentially increase as technological determinists like Ray Kurzweil do, is turning a blind eye to the role energy plays in civilization. By considering energy do we have to conclude our industrial civilization will unravel over the next few decades? Perhaps all our 20th century innovation is built on the high energy environment provided to us by cheap oil, if that’s the case it’s going to be an interesting ride down the back side of Hubbert’s peak.

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Post tags: history, technological program, technology