What is the peak of our civilization?Where do we go from here?

[russ_watters]

So first off, I know the title is a paraphrase from "The Matrix" but just relax: this is not yet another philosophy of The Matrix thread. This is a thread about where the world is and where it is going in terms of development and increasing standard of living. I don't intend it to be political, but I do forsee some political implications, so we'll just have to see where that goes. And I do have some starting premises that you can feel free to challenge:

1. I don't forsee energy production to be a big, big picture/long term issue. Transitions may be painful, but there are ways to power our needs for centuries if not millenia.
2. I don't forsee a population crisis or food production issue being a limiting factor. Rather, I see certain areas of the world that are going to have major problems until they become developed and control their populations. Eventually, the world population will have to level-off one way or another.

So, what I forsee is a gradual leveling-off of the current first-world standard of living, with it advancing not much further than it is today. The main reason is technology: I think it is getting to the point where it is mature, where large advances will become less and less likely.

Some history and background to my argument: The industrial revolution is typically listed as being from the 1790s to 1860s and is cited as, on its own, revolutionizing how people live their lives. And certainly many inventions made huge changes in how people did things (particularly the steam engine itself). But it was more fundamental than even that. It was a re-organization or re-purposing of society from on that put the vast majority of its effort into just staying alive into one where people suddenly had time and money to spare to use to make their lives better. In short, it made the focus of society advancement of itself rather than just sustaining of itself. Contrast that to the preceding centuries or millenia where little in the way of sustained advancement happened.

To make that advancement happen was the rise of engineering (yes, I know what I am...). The rise of engineerng had a complimentary effect on science, helping it advance even more rapidly the century after the industrial revolution than during the scientific revolution a century earlier. Engineering gave scientists the tools they needed to do their jobs better. Other applied sciences (such as medicine) followed.

The working-together of pure and applied sciences in the 20th century led to some truly remarkable advances, such as moving from figuring out how to fly leading to a mature global air travel industry in some 60 years.

But I see science as having a hyperbolic trajectory that is leveling off. Sure it will continue to advance, but that advancement seems to me to be a closing of error margins. Perhaps I lack vision, but I don't see much chance of what we learn in the future having as profound an impact on society as what we learned in the 20th century. I see evidence of this in the leveling-off of the advancement of those technological marvels in the 20th century. The Boeing 707 came out in 1958 and since then we've doubled the time since Kitty Hawk with little fundamental change in air travel. The average life expectancy of westerners about doubled in the 20th century, but the human body seems built to last 90-110 years and now we're spending more and more money on smaller and smaller improvements in health (a trend that has a profound impact on the current political scene of course). Computers were one of the last major advances of the 20th century, but now computing power has plateaued and computers are everywhere, to the point where we'd have trouble figuring out where else to put them!

So I have trouble seeing how we're going to advance much further than we are today. Sure it is possible that I just lack vision, but consider life expectancy, for example. Prior to the maturation of medicine, life was a minefield, riddled with things that might kill you that today are only minor inconveniences. Even if the average life expectancy was 40, if you were one of the lucky ones to navigate that minefield (and it was pretty much entirely a matter of luck), you could live to 80 or beyond. Fast forward to today and the average life expectancy is 80. But it isn't 80 because we've actually extended the potential lifespan of humans - no one lives to 160 today - it is 80 because we've removed most of the mines from the minefield. If in the next 20 or 30 years someone invents a nanobot that swims throughout your body identifying and killing cancer cells, it would be listed as one of the all-time greatest achievements in the history of applied science. But it wouldn't come anywhere close to the true impact of the invention of vaccines and anti-biotics. It would tick-up the average life expectancy perhaps 5 more years, but that's about it. Removing the first half of the minefields has a big effect on life expectancy. Removing the next half has a much smaller effect. That's a hyperbolic trajectory.

For another example, consider what most of us now tend to think of as pretty mundane: heating and air conditioning. I think that for quality of life, there can be scarcely be more profound an advancement than a little box on your wall that ensures that the environment you spend most of your time in is exactly the perfect temperature for you (yes, I realize what I do for a living...). Quality of life-wise, there is nowhere else to go with that. All the future holds for HVAC is to make that most mundane and profound of quality of life enhancements all the more forgettable by reducing how much it costs to have it.

So where do we go from here? I think the only major remaining quality of life challenge is toward equality. Not so much for developed nations - I think as the plateau is reached, more and more people get on it and quality of life differences are already pretty small as it is. I recognize that that that is somewhat of a political opinion and many disagree, but considering that development is a hyperbolc curve, plotting inequality on it yields people not very far from each other in development in a first world nation. Consider that even most poor have plenty of food and refrigerators in the first world (in the US it is over 99% of the poor who own refrigerators). But a former boss of mine adopted a couple of Vietnamese kids and could not get them to stop opening the refrigerator. This cold box filled with food may as well have dropped from an alien spaceship. And forget Disneyland - seeing a fairy-tale land of make-believe wonderfulness just took a trip to the nearest supermarket. Flush toilets? Bill Gates has several, but so do I! Those Vietnamese kids had never had access to. That reality - the one devoid of supermarkets and refrigerators and toilets - is the reality that somewhere around a third to half the world's population still lives in. So the big challenge for the next hundred years plus is getting the rest of the world up to our standard of living -- I think our standard of living isn't going to change much more.

 

[Ryan_m_b]

1. I don't forsee energy production to be a big, big picture/long term issue. Transitions may be painful, but there are ways to power our needs for centuries if not millenia.

I agree with this. Energy prices may rise dramatically and there may be shortages but we have the capacity to wean ourselves off of fossil fuels. Earlier I happened across this article that mentions the dramatic decrease in solar panel cost over the last few years; costs are a quarter now of what they were in 2008 and they halved in 2011 alone.

2. I don't forsee a population crisis or food production issue being a limiting factor. Rather, I see certain areas of the world that are going to have major problems until they become developed and control their populations. Eventually, the world population will have to level-off one way or another.

The cost of raising a child dramatically increases in a developed world, on top of this we have the obvious effect of medicine reducing the need for children. A big often overlooked factor in this issue is rights for women; in a developed country where women have equal rights and equal status in society (or near equal) they tend not to spend most of their adult life pregnant and instead pursue their own careers and lives for a longer time before having children.

So, what I forsee is a gradual leveling-off of the current first-world standard of living, with it advancing not much further than it is today. The main reason is technology: I think it is getting to the point where it is mature, where large advances will become less and less likely.

Here I disagree and agree. Partly I think many areas are becoming mature and are moving into the realm of efficiency and economics over "betterness". There are also many factors other than technology that affect use of technology, you mentioned planes and how commercial liners haven't changed that much (indeed the latest Dreamliner has little improvements in speed but is far more fuel efficient). We have had the technology to run super-sonic commercial airlines for decades but we don't because there is no economic argument for us all to fly in Concordes and there's the problem of noise pollution, instead the trend has been for small short-haul no-thrills flights. I don't envision this changing in the future because of the economics (I don't count the possibility of super-sonic bizjets here).

However I think there are many new fields of technology that are just beginning that offer major paradigm shifts. For example molecular manufacturing via synthetic biology, 3D printers, bespoke-over-net etc all have huge potential to revolutionise manufacturing and materials science. I think there are major fields that could drastically change things in the same way the advent of the internet did but it is hard-impossible to predict them now.

The average life expectancy of westerners about doubled in the 20th century, but the human body seems built to last 90-110 years and now we're spending more and more money on smaller and smaller improvements in health (a trend that has a profound impact on the current political scene of course)...So I have trouble seeing how we're going to advance much further than we are today. Sure it is possible that I just lack vision, but consider life expectancy, for example. Prior to the maturation of medicine, life was a minefield, riddled with things that might kill you that today are only minor inconveniences. Even if the average life expectancy was 40, if you were one of the lucky ones to navigate that minefield (and it was pretty much entirely a matter of luck), you could live to 80 or beyond. Fast forward to today and the average life expectancy is 80. But it isn't 80 because we've actually extended the potential lifespan of humans - no one lives to 160 today - it is 80 because we've removed most of the mines from the minefield. If in the next 20 or 30 years someone invents a nanobot that swims throughout your body identifying and killing cancer cells, it would be listed as one of the all-time greatest achievements in the history of applied science. But it wouldn't come anywhere close to the true impact of the invention of vaccines and anti-biotics. It would tick-up the average life expectancy perhaps 5 more years, but that's about it. Removing the first half of the minefields has a big effect on life expectancy. Removing the next half has a much smaller effect. That's a hyperbolic trajectory.

The problem with life extension is that beyond ~40 years old the ability to maintain and self-repair dramatically decreases. This is due to a complex series of metabolic changes that occur as we age. Things like antibiotics work because they eliminate the thing that is causing harm and allow the body to repair the damage however if the body lacks the ability to repair then there's nothing that can be done (yet: there are some interesting therapeutics in the pipeline that could boost wound healing in those with impaired wound healing). Whilst I might be a bit biased towards the field I feel that regenerative medicine will drastically change medicine in the 21st century, it won't be as simple as the introduction of antibiotics or vaccines but the ability to direct cell behaviour for tissue engineering purposes and the ability to synthesise tissue both in vitro and in vivo will change everything. Nanotechnology has a big part in this (though not robots!) allowing far more precise control of biology. It may be that we manage not only to boost life expectancy further but we significantly increase the period of life spent fit and healthy. Old lungs beginning to pack in? Replace them with fresh ones. Cancer? Get it genotyped and have a tailored medicine delivered via targeted drug delivery mechanisms. Metabolic problems? Gene, protein and antisense therapy will get everything ticking over again.

Computers were one of the last major advances of the 20th century, but now computing power has plateaued and computers are everywhere, to the point where we'd have trouble figuring out where else to put them!

Whilst Moore's law might tap out the difference will be what we do with these computers. Computers of the future might not be that much faster but they could be a hell of a lot smarter (I don't mean anything as science fiction as strong-AI but something along the lines of software intelligent enough to learn behaviour, respond in natural language etc).

So where do we go from here? I think the only major remaining quality of life challenge is toward equality. Not so much for developed nations - I think as the plateau is reached, more and more people get on it and quality of life differences are already pretty small as it is. I recognize that that that is somewhat of a political opinion and many disagree, but considering that development is a hyperbolc curve, plotting inequality on it yields people not very far from each other in development in a first world nation. Consider that even most poor have plenty of food and refrigerators in the first world (in the US it is over 99% of the poor who own refrigerators). But a former boss of mine adopted a couple of Vietnamese kids and could not get them to stop opening the refrigerator. This cold box filled with food may as well have dropped from an alien spaceship. And forget Disneyland - seeing a fairy-tale land of make-believe wonderfulness just took a trip to the nearest supermarket. Flush toilets? Bill Gates has several, but so do I! Those Vietnamese kids had never had access to. That reality - the one devoid of supermarkets and refrigerators and toilets - is the reality that somewhere around a third to half the world's population still lives in. So the big challenge for the next hundred years plus is getting the rest of the world up to our standard of living -- I think our standard of living isn't going to change much more.

Something I would like to see in the future (and I think this is happening with the BRICS amongst others) is wealth more evenly spread across the world rather than having one or two superpowers taking the majority. Hopefully this will extend into the countries with wealth disparity amongst the population being very low. Something we are going to have to deal with is the economy and employment. Increasing automation and specialisation of the workforce removes a lot of demand for work, especially amongst unskilled workers. Adjusting our attitude to work towards a leisure economy where maximum work hours are capped and wage supplemented by something akin to a basic income would allow for productivity but decrease unemployment.

Lastly focus on metrics like Gross National Happiness would be a great way of monitoring and increasing quality of life, at the moment I think the focus purely on economic growth is damaging to the quality of life in many countries.

My 2 cents there

 

[OmCheeto]

So first off... I think our standard of living isn't going to change much more.

Well! Here I've been a socialist marxist commie rat fink my whole life(according to someone, who's name shall remain unspoken, lest he reappear), and now that I've decided to spend the rest of my life being the penultimate capitalist, you've pulled the proverbial Persian rug out from underneath my feet before I even got started.

Thanks a freakin' lot.

---------------------------------
hmmm...
You didn't happen to fall asleep while logged in, with your girlfriend in the house, did you?

 

[russ_watters]

Well! Here I've been a socialist marxist commie rat fink my whole life(according to someone, who's name shall remain unspoken, lest he reappear), and now that I've decided to spend the rest of my life being the penultimate capitalist, you've pulled the proverbial Persian rug out from underneath my feet before I even got started.

Thanks a freakin' lot.

I think my opinions are sometimes misunderstood and in this case I think the logic should be pretty straightforward (and I think political logic is often twisted and wrong, but people get too used to it): Since I don't think that the actual standard of living is very unequal in the west, I don't think there is much to be gained from re-distribution. But the other side of the coin is that though there isn't much to be gained, standard of living-wise in going from $20K in salary to $20M in salary, that doesn't mean we should confiscate the rest of the money.

What I'm looking for in terms of "equality" isn't leveling-out the incomes in the west at $60k, it is moving most of the rest of the world from $20 to $20K.

---------------------------------
hmmm...
You didn't happen to fall asleep while logged in, with your girlfriend in the house, did you?

She's pretty uninterested in politics, but what little interest she has appears conservative.

 

[russ_watters]

I agree with this.

We agreed on a lot, so I don't have a lot to respond to at the moment, but would like to expand on...

Adjusting our attitude to work towards a leisure economy where maximum work hours are capped and wage supplemented by something akin to a basic income would allow for productivity but decrease unemployment.

Lastly focus on metrics like Gross National Happiness would be a great way of monitoring and increasing quality of life, at the moment I think the focus purely on economic growth is damaging to the quality of life in many countries.

I think that the way people approach life has already changed in the west from a focus on day-to-day survival to happiness. But I worry that that may carry with it a loss of motivation to do one's job and I'm concerned that losing our competitiveness could cause a reversal of some of our advancement for some. I see things that I perceive as symptoms of that.

I agree with reducing working hours and increasing leisure time, but I also worry about how we can still generate the income to afford leisure time with less work. It doesn't make sense to me, but it does seem to be working out ok in Europe.

 

[Ryan_m_b]

We agreed on a lot, so I don't have a lot to respond to at the moment, but would like to expand on... I think that the way people approach life has already changed in the west from a focus on day-to-day survival to happiness. But I worry that that may carry with it a loss of motivation to do one's job and I'm concerned that losing our competitiveness could cause a reversal of some of our advancement for some. I see things that I perceive as symptoms of that.

Hmm if anything I see us moving away from increasing societal happiness (though there are recent programs in the UK by the government to outline how we could measure quality of life). I think a lot of the time emphasis is put on economic success over quality of life but that could just be because the economic crisis of the last few years has changed people's focus.

I agree with reducing working hours and increasing leisure time, but I also worry about how we can still generate the income to afford leisure time with less work. It doesn't make sense to me, but it does seem to be working out ok in Europe.

Productivity could be sustained by spreading out the jobs so that part-time work becomes more common. Regarding income there are various ways of dealing with it like lowering taxes for low paid jobs or introducing some sort of basic income guarentee.

 

[AlephZero]

I think you missed a huge change that happened mostly in the 20th century, and mostly caused by the development of electronics. To oversimplify it into a bullet point, "nobody knows how anything works any more", and even if they do know at a theoretical level, most people can't do much with that knowledge in practice.

I would speculate that homo sapiens has a built-in drive to "make stuff", left over from when that was a necessary attribute for survival, and many of the problems of the "first world" stem from the fact that for whole sections of society, there are few meaningful ways to satisfy that drive.

This was not an issue at all before the industrial revolution, since almost everybody was involved at first or second hand in the business of survival. Even those with servants/slaves to do the actual work for them had to be capable of managing them. Before the "electronic revolution", it didn't require much specialist knowledge to understand at least in a general way how machinery worked, from direct observation. But nobody is ever going to figure out how a cellphone works just by looking at it.

My two cents: the next sea-change comparable with the industrial revolution will happen if and when that issue is resolved somehow, and not before.

 

[Ryan_m_b]

I think you missed a huge change that happened mostly in the 20th century, and mostly caused by the development of electronics. To oversimplify it into a bullet point, "nobody knows how anything works any more", and even if they do know at a theoretical level, most people can't do much with that knowledge in practice.

A secondary effect of that is whilst a pre-industrial revolution society could take something like a plague that get's rid of a significant portion of society and then just continue as normal we can't. Because we have a hugely specialised work force it would take minimum millions of specialised workers to keep us ticking over. (This is also something that science fiction usually ignores, it's a common troupe for a crew of a few thousands to rebuild a high-tech society but that wouldn't even be enough people to fill every medical/engineering/manufacturing speciality).

the next sea-change comparable with the industrial revolution will happen if and when that issue is resolved somehow, and not before.

Barring some huge leaps in artificial intelligence, augmented intelligence or education (to the point where we can roll out PhDs like a factory assembly line) I doubt this issue can be solved.

 

[WhoWee]

So where do we go from here? I think the only major remaining quality of life challenge is toward equality. Not so much for developed nations - I think as the plateau is reached, more and more people get on it and quality of life differences are already pretty small as it is. I recognize that that that is somewhat of a political opinion and many disagree, but considering that development is a hyperbolc curve, plotting inequality on it yields people not very far from each other in development in a first world nation. Consider that even most poor have plenty of food and refrigerators in the first world (in the US it is over 99% of the poor who own refrigerators). But a former boss of mine adopted a couple of Vietnamese kids and could not get them to stop opening the refrigerator. This cold box filled with food may as well have dropped from an alien spaceship. And forget Disneyland - seeing a fairy-tale land of make-believe wonderfulness just took a trip to the nearest supermarket. Flush toilets? Bill Gates has several, but so do I! Those Vietnamese kids had never had access to. That reality - the one devoid of supermarkets and refrigerators and toilets - is the reality that somewhere around a third to half the world's population still lives in. So the big challenge for the next hundred years plus is getting the rest of the world up to our standard of living -- I think our standard of living isn't going to change much more.

Unfortunately, I think we're going to see a leveling of productivity and regression of standard of living (in the West) - given the entitlement mentality of Western popultions. This of course will open the door of opportunity to others to achieve a higher standard of living and wealth accumulation.

 

[Jobrag]

Everything that can be invented has been invented.
Charles H. Duell, Commissioner, U.S. patent office, 1899 (attributed)

"I think there is a world market for maybe five computers."
- Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, 1943

 

[Ryan_m_b]

Everything that can be invented has been invented.
Charles H. Duell, Commissioner, U.S. patent office, 1899 (attributed)

"I think there is a world market for maybe five computers."
- Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, 1943

"That's one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind"
-- Neil Armstrong, first man on the Moon: July 20th 1969

"It's our destiny to explore. It's our destiny to be a space-faring nation"
-- Eugene Cernan, last man on the Moon: December 19th 1972

My point being that whilst some predictions laughably underestimate the future others laughably overestimate. Just because things have gone well and improved in the past is no evidence that this will be true of the future. Note that I'm not arguing either way, just making the observation that predicting the future up or down is notoriously flawed.

 

[WhoWee]

"I think there is a world market for maybe five computers."
- Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, 1943

Who knows - maybe time will prove him correct? The military/space agency, finance/commerce, Government, medical/science, and research/engineering?

 

[Ryan_m_b]

"I think there is a world market for maybe five computers."
- Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, 1943

Who knows - maybe time will prove him correct? The military/space agency, finance/commerce, Government, medical/science, and research/engineering?

Not only that but technically he was right: he didn't qualify that he meant only five computers.

 

[Jobrag]

Who knows - maybe time will prove him correct? The military/space agency, finance/commerce, Government, medical/science, and research/engineering?

You missed gaming and pornography!

 

[WhoWee]

You missed gaming and pornography!

That probably falls under Government - an approved (union benefit) lunch room activity in the future.

 

[Dotini]

You missed gaming and pornography!

Is gaming and pornography a typical attribute of a civilization at its peak?

Respectfully submitted,
Steve

 

[Ryan_m_b]

Is gaming and pornography a typical attribute of a civilization at its peak?

Respectfully submitted,
Steve

You could argue that a significant portion of time devoted to leisure is a typical attribute of a civilisation at its peak.

 

[Czcibor]

Unfortunately, I think we're going to see a leveling of productivity and regression of standard of living (in the West) - given the entitlement mentality of Western popultions. This of course will open the door of opportunity to others to achieve a higher standard of living and wealth accumulation.

Well, actually that proves Russ Watters point - such full of laziness and gluttony life used to accessible only for depraved nobility, now it's possible for masses. ;)

However I doubt that these social changes can seriously change the direction (they would merely make the path there more bumpy.


I agree with the rest of the world catching up the first world and that difference disappearing.

I see that law of diminishing returns also viable for technological innovation, however there are plenty of tech improvements that would change our lives which weren't mentioned so far:
- cars not needing driver; (Think how that would improve satisfaction from parties ;) , more seriously kid could be sent to kindergarten with such a car)
- lot's of work done by civil servants or by bureaucracy of big companies actually does not require any thinking (or even thinking is implicitly banned by regulations which require strict sticking to them). If there were standardized electronic documents with electronic signature the whole process could go without any human involved. Quicker and reducing need for human work.

 

[Physics Monkey]

I suspect that within 100 years we will have constructed artificial beings that have cognitive powers far surpassing our own.

I don't mean to imply that these entities will be our enemies or anything (since we're avoiding matrix silliness ), but it will fundamentally alter the nature of our civilization.

 

[Ryan_m_b]

- cars not needing driver; (Think how that would improve satisfaction from parties ;) , more seriously kid could be sent to kindergarten with such a car)

This would be very interesting for a number of reasons, not least in how public transport would be affected. Perhaps large buses with fixed routes would be replaced by smaller buses who pick you up if you are on the way e.g. a commuter types into their smartphone their destination which get's fired off to all the autobuses in the area. One who is already taking a couple of passengers that way will divert to pick them up. ETA based on standard traveling behaviour at that time added to real time updates though perhaps a function to pay more to speed up the journey (standard ticket will get you there, fast track will get you in guaranteed time, express will not pick up anyone else). Also the idea of owning a car would largely fade IMO. Cars spend most of their time sitting somewhere waiting to be driven, either in a car park, garage, side-of-road etc which is a waste of space. Especially if you live in a very congested city that was built hundreds/thousands of years before the invention of the car! Perhaps a transition to shared ownership/subscription to taxi service would be more common.

- lot's of work done by civil servants or by bureaucracy of big companies actually does not require any thinking (or even thinking is implicitly banned by regulations which require strict sticking to them). If there were standardized electronic documents with electronic signature the whole process could go without any human involved. Quicker and reducing need for human work.

I suspect that within 100 years we will have constructed artificial beings that have cognitive powers far surpassing our own.

I don't mean to imply that these entities will be our enemies or anything (since we're avoiding matrix silliness ), but it will fundamentally alter the nature of our civilization.

These two are fairly linked together. Personally I highly doubt we'll be building conscious beings any time soon, not just because of technological limitations but also because we have no need to. Rather software (again IMO) will continue to get more capable continuing to take on tasks that previously were restricted to conscious beings. It's the classic AI effect.

 

[cmb]

...
1. I don't forsee energy production to be a big, big picture/long term issue. Transitions may be painful, but there are ways to power our needs for centuries if not millenia.
2. I don't forsee a population crisis or food production issue being a limiting factor. Rather, I see certain areas of the world that are going to have major problems until they become developed and control their populations. Eventually, the world population will have to level-off one way or another.


...I think as the plateau is reached, more and more people get on it and quality of life differences are already pretty small as it is.

You've a bundle of thoughts embedded in your post, but I think the last phrase is your conclusion. (?)

It differs to the title, though; can I be clear you are proposing that civilisation can and/or will level off and persist [indefinitely, if so for how long??], or is the 'peak' of your title meaning that we're on a downward trend now?

I regret I am extremely pessimistic on this. I agree with (1) - we do have known means to keep enough energy production for a few 10,000's years, which is fast breeder nuclear power. But I am pessimistic that the course of human politics is such that we will be able to achieve that, before industrial infrastructure collapses.

So I'd like to take a moment to focus on 'industrial infrastructure', which I feel you missed out discussion but is all-important. I don't think your thesis pays due respect to the significance industry and science that preceded the industrial revolution by 2,000 years.

What prompted the industrial revolution was seeking mechanical power to pump tin mines that had reached well under the Cornish sea. But tin mining was an industry in the Roman times, so this was not exactly 'a new issue'. What it was, though, was a demonstration of the need for ever increasing levels of technology to reach ever receding resources to satisfy ever burgeoning demands for industrial feedstock.

I think this last point is key to comprehending and predicting the future trajectory of mankind: 150 years ago it was possible, in some places on earth, to be an 'oil producer' by simply having a bucket! - you'd go collect some at a tar-pit! Now we drill 5 miles under the sea bed. That is a staggering change to how we drive our industrial infrastructure!

And to make this kit that allows us to hunt those oil deposits we need an industrial infrastructure. Imagine that back in the industrial revolution all that coal and oil was all buried 5 miles underground. It should be evident that we'd not have had an industrial revolution!

OK, so just imagine now that the industrial infrastructure of today (that facilitates access to those deep resources) for some reason or other - nuclear war, major pestilence, a big meteor, anything that causes an interruption to the global flow of industry, in fact - and we find ourselves with an industrial infrastructure no more capable that that of the 1600's. I reckon we'd never be able to claw our way back up again in any meaningful way to what we consider 'a modern civilisation'. We need to maintain and preserve the global industrial infrastructure like we need to make sure a patients heart and lungs keep on working even if we're operating on their legs. (maybe not the best analogy, hope it makes the point).

I fear the worst for mankind. Sorry, but I think the 'collective intelligence' [maybe an oxymoron?] of the world's political classes may be such that they actually cause the failure of the scope and scale of the industrial infrastructure we need to keep the 'body-of-industry' working. This is a result of the accessibility of resources. Not that the resources will necessarily run out, but that we need, and will continue to need, those resources to build machines to access [or recycle] those resources, so if there is an interruption in that whole process, it'd be like a heart attack and I find it difficult to see how we'd get that beating again.

The day I will withdraw that comment is the day I see someone manufacture a PV solar panel from raw materials/energy they have collected/generated for themselves from renewable, surface collected materials. Solar panels are great, but I have yet to hear of one being made using only the power from other solar panels! I think the figure is something like America needing to fill up the whole of New Mexico, and a bit more, to provide the current industrial energy consumption.

I don't accept such renewable energy is viable as a complete solution. Anyone who studies this should realize in very short order that to maintain industrial infrastructure we need nuclear power right now, because in burning fossil fuels we're effectively burning away the chemical feed-stock we'll need for future industrial activity. It's just plain crazy. We need to move on to fast-breeders within a 100 years or so, so that we've got long enough to figure out fusion power. And then we use that energy to drive recycling and reconvert our industrial waste back to the feedstock it once was.

My prediction is grim: We either aim for 100% industrial nuclear power right now, or in 200 years we'll be back in mediaeval times (if we're lucky and the forests have re-grown to support us). I think the latter will happen. We know civilisations spontaneously collapse - maybe it is inevitable because politics is an inevitable outcome of civilisation. It'd also explain why we've never found signs of life elsewhere in the Universe, if civilisations can only fundamentally survive for a few 100 years.

So, yup, I reckon we've hit peak civilisation. Hold on to the roller-coaster, we're going to go over the top, and down, at a hell of a rate from here on!

(This is a prediction I will not mind being wrong about!)

 

[Ryan_m_b]

Cmb I agree with almost all your points, it is quite terrifying to not only think of the fragility of our civilisation but also the greater fall we'd have if it actually happened. Another aspect to what you are saying is how many people it requires to maintain our "Noosphere". It isn't enough just to have written information, we need people educated in fields in order to maintain them (imagine a group of 16th century scholars finding a book on pebble-bed reactors and trying to understand it), this is compounded by the problem that we don't build libraries as instruction manuals but as reference resources.

What I disagree with you on is whether or not we are on the way down, I don't think we are (fingers crossed!) and I think that things are going to get better as our technology simplifies itself via increased complexity. This sounds stupid (and it might be) but I'm alluding to what you've mentioned about at home manufacturing; a 3D printer is very complicated but it simplifies, from the point of the user, the process of manufacturing. Also projects like the http://opensourceecology.org/wiki-gvcs.php are remarkable. The brain child of Marcin Jukubowski the idea is to create open source designs for (initially) ~50 machines that can be built and maintained with simple tools but that can greatly improve local industry in a sustainable way. Not only that but Marcin aims to eventually have a simple CD that contains not only the blueprints but also educational videos and texts explaining the processes behind the machines. As you can see from the Ted talk Marcin built a machine that can take the dirt from his farm and produce 5000 bricks per day! In the short term projects like this could greatly help local/at-home manufacturing which would not only help places in developing world countries but also in the developed world.

I'd love to see what a project like this could achieve if it was turned into an international megaproject with billions of dollars of funding but that would be a hard sell.

 

[cmb]

It isn't enough just to have written information, we need people educated in fields in order to maintain them (imagine a group of 16th century scholars finding a book on pebble-bed reactors and trying to understand it), this is compounded by the problem that we don't build libraries as instruction manuals but as reference resources.

I fully concur. I emphasised 'hardware' but should've mentioned 'capability' too (were it not for post length). Thanks for flagging it. It is a big issue. Sometimes, 'keeping the wheels of industry turning' is not a means for economic benefits, it is one of national security so we do not lose skills to do what needs doing when they need doing! But these are seeds of wisdom that fall on stony political ground. You can tell the politicians. (You just can't tell 'em much.)

What I disagree with you on is whether or not we are on the way down, I don't think we are do (fingers crossed!) and I think that things are going to get better as our technology simplifies itself via increased complexity.

I sure hope you're right and I'm wrong!

Problem is; shattered financial markets, and unconstrained and limitless growth on the cost of commodities (both vegetable and mineral) are what you'd expect on the way down. Everything begins to get difficult to obtain. You can write it off as a recession for so long. We've yet to see if we come out the other side of it.

 

[Czcibor]

This would be very interesting for a number of reasons, not least in how public transport would be affected. Perhaps large buses with fixed routes would be replaced by smaller buses who pick you up if you are on the way e.g. a commuter types into their smartphone their destination which get's fired off to all the autobuses in the area. One who is already taking a couple of passengers that way will divert to pick them up. ETA based on standard traveling behaviour at that time added to real time updates though perhaps a function to pay more to speed up the journey (standard ticket will get you there, fast track will get you in guaranteed time, express will not pick up anyone else). Also the idea of owning a car would largely fade IMO. Cars spend most of their time sitting somewhere waiting to be driven, either in a car park, garage, side-of-road etc which is a waste of space. Especially if you live in a very congested city that was built hundreds/thousands of years before the invention of the car! Perhaps a transition to shared ownership/subscription to taxi service would be more common.

I've thought about a bit longer and flatter cars that can be used for comfortable sleeping - you fall asleap near your home and weak up at the destination.

Yes, there should be move towards only renting cars on demand instead of owning them, however those who need them at top usage hours - rush hours would presumably anyway need their.

Also the whole system could use dynamic planning - you would not ask the car to came there where you are, but set your destination your preference for walk and be informed that ex. you should go downstreet for ten minutes at the place where the car would come.

These two are fairly linked together. Personally I highly doubt we'll be building conscious beings any time soon, not just because of technological limitations but also because we have no need to. Rather software (again IMO) will continue to get more capable continuing to take on tasks that previously were restricted to conscious beings. It's the classic AI effect.

Linked but with one difference - the part that I said concerning e-documents did not require any technological achievment just... heroic struggle to make govs use computers properly. ;)

 

[Ryan_m_b]

I've thought about a bit longer and flatter cars that can be used for comfortable sleeping - you fall asleap near your home and weak up at the destination.

Yes, there should be move towards only renting cars on demand instead of owning them, however those who need them at top usage hours - rush hours would presumably anyway need their.

Also the whole system could use dynamic planning - you would not ask the car to came there where you are, but set your destination your preference for walk and be informed that ex. you should go downstreet for ten minutes at the place where the car would come.

A big advantage could be a reduction in journey time which could greatly help deliveries and freight as well as personal transport. Reason being that you won't traffic jams as everyone slows down to watch an accident, or situations where people unnecessarily brake/change speed which ripples down the cars behind them, or situations when people wait for unnecessary lengths of time to pull out at crossings etc. Essentially cars can just travel consistently in one formation at high speed. It could also greatly improve fuel efficiency by allowing cars to travel optimum distances between each other to reduce wind resistance, this is a key part of the EU SARTRE project
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YOF0fzIuDfc
Also In the long term there could be a boost in efficiency by adjusting car sizes to fit needs. If it is just one person planning to go from A to B with no luggage a small one man car could be summoned, no more lines of traffic with cars carrying mostly empty seats.

Also it occurs to me that things like trains may fade. If driver error can be removed from the equation, need for a driving license and all cars can drive at high speeds in formation then trains might not be able to compete with motorways.

 

[cmb]

... trains may fade. If driver error can be removed from the equation, need for a driving license and all cars can drive at high speeds in formation then trains might not be able to compete with motorways.

Rail already cannot compete with road. If you have any doubt, go stand next to a railway and next to a motorway, and let me know which one represents more efficient utilisation*... and that's with 'stupid' drivers at the wheels, when computer controlled traffic could theoretically make yet higher utilisation of the roads.

*This is not even dealing with the ridiculous 'serial' nature of rail - if something breaks down on the track, the whole route is done for. Rail is an anachronistic 17th century technology.

 

[Ryan_m_b]

Rail already cannot compete with road. If you have any doubt, go stand next to a railway and next to a motorway, and let me know which one represents more efficient utilisation*... and that's with 'stupid' drivers at the wheels, when computer controlled traffic could theoretically make yet higher utilisation of the roads.

*This is not even dealing with the ridiculous 'serial' nature of rail - if something breaks down on the track, the whole route is done for. Rail is an anachronistic 17th century technology.

Hmmm that depends where you are from. In the UK at least it is far better to get the train thanks to the over-congestion of the roads and the speed of the trains. With a train you can average 70+ mph (so long as your route doesn't have dozens of stops) and can get right from city centre to city centre. If I get the train to central London from the nearest station to my house it takes 20 minutes on a fast train, 35 on the slow. By car it takes 40 minutes to get to the edge of London in good traffic and about another 40 to get to central in ideal conditions. Also if there is a fault in the line they can just switch to an adjacent track. If it is something massive they can back up and take a similar route (this has happened to me before) and scramble to organise rail replacement buses for the stations that this can't be done for.

There is definitely a place for trains in the present day however if you throw self-driving cars into the mix with no allowance/heavy restriction for manual driving the advantage swings the other way.

 

[WhoWee]

A big advantage could be a reduction in journey time which could greatly help deliveries and freight as well as personal transport. Reason being that you won't traffic jams as everyone slows down to watch an accident, or situations where people unnecessarily brake/change speed which ripples down the cars behind them, or situations when people wait for unnecessary lengths of time to pull out at crossings etc. Essentially cars can just travel consistently in one formation at high speed. It could also greatly improve fuel efficiency by allowing cars to travel optimum distances between each other to reduce wind resistance, this is a key part of the EU SARTRE project
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YOF0fzIuDfc
Also In the long term there could be a boost in efficiency by adjusting car sizes to fit needs. If it is just one person planning to go from A to B with no luggage a small one man car could be summoned, no more lines of traffic with cars carrying mostly empty seats.

Also it occurs to me that things like trains may fade. If driver error can be removed from the equation, need for a driving license and all cars can drive at high speeds in formation then trains might not be able to compete with motorways.

It looks like a good concept for commuter distances. I think the logistics of the inner city might be very difficult. One possibility might be to integrate into public transport buses and use HOV/Bus lanes to move through inner city traffic to disengagement points or hubs of some type - maybe allow a brief window to disconnect when the bus stops?

 

[cmb]

There is definitely a place for trains in the present day however if you throw self-driving cars into the mix with no allowance/heavy restriction for manual driving the advantage swings the other way.

Trains might represent a quicker means of transport in their current form compared with roads whose growth and evolution have been deliberately ignored for years, but I'm not arguing that. Trains are the wrong technology. What I'm getting at is that if you were to rip up those rail tracks and lay down a computer controlled road surface, which are dedicated to use by computer controlled high speed buses and trucks running along them instead, the utilisation and flexibility available would then make it very clear why trains are a waste of the space their rail tracks occupy.

 

[Ryan_m_b]

It looks like a good concept for commuter distances. I think the logistics of the inner city might be very difficult. One possibility might be to integrate into public transport buses and use HOV/Bus lanes to move through inner city traffic to disengagement points or hubs of some type - maybe allow a brief window to disconnect when the bus stops?

I think the project idea is just for motorways at this stage. The idea is one could join a motorway, get alerted of a nearby train and choose to join it. The truck can just drive up and down the length of the motorway a few times a day leading cars that join for a while and come off when their exit is coming up.

Trains might represent a quicker means of transport in their current form compared with roads whose growth and evolution have been deliberately ignored for years, but I'm not arguing that. Trains are the wrong technology. What I'm getting at is that if you were to rip up those rail tracks and lay down a computer controlled road surface, which are dedicated to use by computer controlled high speed buses and trucks running along them instead, the utilisation and flexibility available would then make it very clear why trains are a waste of the space their rail tracks occupy.

I'm still not convinced for a few reasons. I don't think a bus or truck is as fuel efficient as a train, couldn't keep up with the speed of a train (especially if it is a high-speed rail line) and the biggest point would be that the technology to run automatic vehicles is very recent and to implement it would require tearing down and rebuilding trillions of pounds worth of infrastructure for little or no advantage.

 

[WhoWee]

I think the project idea is just for motorways at this stage. The idea is one could join a motorway, get alerted of a nearby train and choose to join it. The truck can just drive up and down the length of the motorway a few times a day leading cars that join for a while and come off when their exit is coming up.

If they could figure a way to store very large charges on those trucks - to power hybrids or EV's on the train - that could be exciting.

 

[Ryan_m_b]

If they could figure a way to store very large charges on those trucks - to power hybrids or EV's on the train - that could be exciting.

Definitely. It would also be interesting if this could be linked to some form of public transport. For instance, some form of simple car that is stored by the exits of motorways. People can then jump in the car that waits for the nearest train to arrive before entering the motorway automatically, joining the train and ride it to an exit of their choice.

 

[WhoWee]

Definitely. It would also be interesting if this could be linked to some form of public transport. For instance, some form of simple car that is stored by the exits of motorways. People can then jump in the car that waits for the nearest train to arrive before entering the motorway automatically, joining the train and ride it to an exit of their choice.

Little 3 wheeled pods that could be used around town perhaps?

 

[Ryan_m_b]

Little 3 wheeled pods that could be used around town perhaps?

Yeah something like that. Something small, simple and efficient.

 

[jreelawg]

I think it is kind of an interesting contradiction, that technological advance and maturity will lead to increased industrial efficiency, but will also reduce demand for workers. The standard of living you would think should go up as the world is able to produce more at less cost, but it's actually not that simple. I think that a lack of work, and economic frustrations will probably inspire a new attempt at either Socialism, or Communism, or something similar.