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playing catch-up:
I think I'm mostly caught up on the usual suspects. And, as usual, both Peter Watts and John Michael Greer are spot-on (and David Brin is starting to look like a complete ass, but that simply scores another point for "do NOT read the comments").
And as I contemplate Greer's ruminations on the fall of civilizations and the similarity of various "dark ages" … and I remember the Motie museum, and think about the Long Now's Rosetta Stone project and Clock … I wonder if it's possible to salvage more knowledge this time?
What would it take to avoid a global Dark Age? What might it take to "reboot" a somewhat technical civilization (something we might recognize/feel comfortable in) in the absence of fossil fuels?
I am an introvert, and feel like I'm lacking some crucial insights into basic human power-structures and dynamics; have never been a keen student of history. So, I have absolutely no idea how something like the preservation of knowledge over centuries of strife and dissolution might be accomplished. I really don't even know where to start. But it's going to be occupying a good bit of my thought processes for a while…
(And, in my usual practical/cynical fashion, I am not at all surprised that the silverbacks are getting agitated, given where we are on the general downslope of "civilization" - buckle your seatbelts and get your kill-switches ready, decide ahead of time where you look back and where you decide not to be seen in the first place.)
And as I contemplate Greer's ruminations on the fall of civilizations and the similarity of various "dark ages" … and I remember the Motie museum, and think about the Long Now's Rosetta Stone project and Clock … I wonder if it's possible to salvage more knowledge this time?
What would it take to avoid a global Dark Age? What might it take to "reboot" a somewhat technical civilization (something we might recognize/feel comfortable in) in the absence of fossil fuels?
I am an introvert, and feel like I'm lacking some crucial insights into basic human power-structures and dynamics; have never been a keen student of history. So, I have absolutely no idea how something like the preservation of knowledge over centuries of strife and dissolution might be accomplished. I really don't even know where to start. But it's going to be occupying a good bit of my thought processes for a while…
(And, in my usual practical/cynical fashion, I am not at all surprised that the silverbacks are getting agitated, given where we are on the general downslope of "civilization" - buckle your seatbelts and get your kill-switches ready, decide ahead of time where you look back and where you decide not to be seen in the first place.)
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The Watts post in question is here: http://www.rifters.com/crawl/?p=4937
It's the combination of the two that gets me, though - the military has been putting out public whitepapers for years now talking about the threats implicit in both climate change and peak oil, so it really should come as no surprise that the Powers That Be are investing heavily in surveillance and control technologies...