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posted: *feb 28 2022*
The world has made massive leaps and bounds in computational power over the
last 50 years. Year-over-year, decade-over-decade, we stand now as giants upon
the bones, regolith and bedrock of our forebears.
But I can't help but wonder if we're careening toward a cliff. Maybe it's a
hard wall of material shortages and natural resource deprivation, prompting
a massive overhaul of recycling and repurposing efforts that try and make the
most of every single nanometer of silicon, every milliliter of petroleum, and
every gram of precious metals like platinum.
Maybe it's a de-escalation of computational power and reach; perhaps we hit
"peak FLOPS" already, and we're slowly on the course of evermore refining the
bandwidth and power we have, all the while starting to lose the capability (or
even the desire) to push the wall of Moore's Law any further.
Maybe all the dumb things we're currently embroiled in wind up bearing the kind
of fruitful consequences that result in mankind getting a fresh start as an
Industrial Revolution-era society, a Gilded Age renaissance driven by the
apocalyptic decisions of the first half of this century; now proven incapable,
or at least, unwilling, to progress further beyond. That's how you get stuff
like A Mechanicum for Liebowitz, or Dune. Neither of which are particularly
appetizing futures.
Or maybe we go further down the rabbit hole and full-send ourselves into a
Matrix, Fahrenheit 451, or 1984 kind of dystopia regardless of whether or not
we even have the resources and manpower to sustain it for more than a few
decades.
Who knows. I'm not trying to be a downer about any of this. It's just a concept
that I look at almost daily, and can't help but wonder where the dumpster we
are all currently floating in is actually headed.
Any thoughts?
Personally I'd prefer a future where we're basically at a 1940's or 50's level
of automation and capability, and we've gone back to a somewhat more agrarian
and manual kind of labor base. Dumb work is dumb, but it's more honest than
pushing ones and zeroes for their own sake, in many ways, I feel.
Comments? Questions? They go here.
wholesomedonut at tuta dot io