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Should we even -try- to sustain our current technological cadence?

posted: *feb 28 2022*

Ultimately this is just a question I don't really have an answer to.

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.

Contact me

Comments? Questions? They go here.

wholesomedonut at tuta dot io