State of the universe
Jan. 25th, 2012 03:36 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethIt is possible I have read too many dystopias in a row. But I'm having one of those moments where the future is looking kind of shaky. As in, I'm not sure how many humans can possibly get there.
It's weird, because there's strands where science is going Star Trek, or revealing Trek as really slow and unimaginative. Machines make things for us. Printers can make 3D objects. We program things once, we get them forever. Replicators are on their way. It's pretty awesome.
Unless you happen to live in a capitalist society where work is a requirement, because then all the work keeps going away. Between smarter computers and smarter robots it's all going weirdly service industry. The logical conclusion is restaurants where everyone takes turns serving cause that's the only jobs. And, okay, lots of knowledge work, lots of big arguing, lots of teaching and learning. That's cool. There's still things to do, but there's still a ton of people with nothing to do and a society not set up to deal with that.
More depressing though is the suspicion we're going to hit constraints hard in the very near future. Energy and water are the biggies. Water is getting pumped from places it has been accumulating for geologic time, and it is not replenishing. We will run out of current sources of water. There's a lot more water on the planet, but turning it into useful stuff requires energy. Energy sources right now are dependent on stuff we know is going to run out. Soon. Sustainable power is a nice idea, but is it happening? And nobody wants nuclear due to the blowing up, melting down, and leaving waste that will last longer than human civilisation thus far. Which seems reasonable. If we step up a tech level and fusion gets useful that'll be nifty. But there seems to be a major speed bump in the very near future.
Biofuels are promising. Make all the oil, skip the part where it stays under rocks for ages. But biofuel grows best in the same places everything else grows best. More and more humans exist, and want to eat. Already food is short in lots of places. A lot of that is capitalism and uneven distribution again. People grow stuff for other people to sell on other continents, having neither time nor land to grow their own food. And they die a lot. It's depressing. I eat vegetarian because lower on the food chain should be able to support more. But mostly the world is eating more meat, not less, and that's just not going to work.
Tech level jump may come to the rescue again, but even the really clever stuff is available Real Soon Now. It's a race to see if there'll be a huge great gap.
If everything had been more efficient it would last a lot longer.
Maybe everywhere could try growing its own food. Less lorries, more farmers. Not so much land spent growing flowers and then flying them half way around the world.
There's stuff like airponics and vertical farming, ways you can design office buildings to grow stuff for you, lots of clever possibilities. That need power and water. I wonder how biofuels work out if you try growing them up the inside of office space on big felt mats.
But all the big solutions rely on large numbers of people acting sensibly and changing their habits.
I mean, the shops don't import flowers from half way across the globe just so they sit in the shop looking pretty, it's because people have got used to buying any flowers they want. And the shop can make plenty profit on them. So instead of basics we get frills. And people are in food poverty.
Shopping habits and the way shops try and have all the varieties of all the foods all the times leads to MASSIVE waste. How much food goes past date and gets slung out? Tons of food! We waste so much stuffs.
Energy also, lots of bad habits. Says I who has the heat on high and the lights turned on in the kitchen all the time so I don't have to fiddle with light switches in the other rooms the kitchen lights. I have bad habits too. I'm no paragon.
But the world is so complicated, and already set up so many kinds of wasteful, I don't know how to fix my own consumption, let alone all the world at once.
And I don't think most people will try very hard, or even think about it, until things get very difficult for them.
So I think things are going to get grim. Horrible crunch times. Not just here, all over.
Especially since, when the resources crunch, people start looking at their neighbours. And there's some damn big armies around.
The only consolation is people have been saying pretty much the exact same things for long times now, and we're still here. Dad used to think the end of the world was seriously nigh. Maybe he read too many dystopias too.
I keep looking at the problems and thinking some of them could fix each other if they turned around a bit. People need more housing, and things need to be more efficient. Build fancy science designed very good places, need less energy, maybe grow more stuff. Lots of jobs for lots of people making them all good. Lots of good places to live after they're built. And, granted, if they're nice enough the people building them probably won't be the people that can move into them, but repeated it might make difference.
I don't know though. Can't think big and complex enough. Think it's all going to fall down go boom.
Should probably eat breakfast and go think of something else.
It's weird, because there's strands where science is going Star Trek, or revealing Trek as really slow and unimaginative. Machines make things for us. Printers can make 3D objects. We program things once, we get them forever. Replicators are on their way. It's pretty awesome.
Unless you happen to live in a capitalist society where work is a requirement, because then all the work keeps going away. Between smarter computers and smarter robots it's all going weirdly service industry. The logical conclusion is restaurants where everyone takes turns serving cause that's the only jobs. And, okay, lots of knowledge work, lots of big arguing, lots of teaching and learning. That's cool. There's still things to do, but there's still a ton of people with nothing to do and a society not set up to deal with that.
More depressing though is the suspicion we're going to hit constraints hard in the very near future. Energy and water are the biggies. Water is getting pumped from places it has been accumulating for geologic time, and it is not replenishing. We will run out of current sources of water. There's a lot more water on the planet, but turning it into useful stuff requires energy. Energy sources right now are dependent on stuff we know is going to run out. Soon. Sustainable power is a nice idea, but is it happening? And nobody wants nuclear due to the blowing up, melting down, and leaving waste that will last longer than human civilisation thus far. Which seems reasonable. If we step up a tech level and fusion gets useful that'll be nifty. But there seems to be a major speed bump in the very near future.
Biofuels are promising. Make all the oil, skip the part where it stays under rocks for ages. But biofuel grows best in the same places everything else grows best. More and more humans exist, and want to eat. Already food is short in lots of places. A lot of that is capitalism and uneven distribution again. People grow stuff for other people to sell on other continents, having neither time nor land to grow their own food. And they die a lot. It's depressing. I eat vegetarian because lower on the food chain should be able to support more. But mostly the world is eating more meat, not less, and that's just not going to work.
Tech level jump may come to the rescue again, but even the really clever stuff is available Real Soon Now. It's a race to see if there'll be a huge great gap.
If everything had been more efficient it would last a lot longer.
Maybe everywhere could try growing its own food. Less lorries, more farmers. Not so much land spent growing flowers and then flying them half way around the world.
There's stuff like airponics and vertical farming, ways you can design office buildings to grow stuff for you, lots of clever possibilities. That need power and water. I wonder how biofuels work out if you try growing them up the inside of office space on big felt mats.
But all the big solutions rely on large numbers of people acting sensibly and changing their habits.
I mean, the shops don't import flowers from half way across the globe just so they sit in the shop looking pretty, it's because people have got used to buying any flowers they want. And the shop can make plenty profit on them. So instead of basics we get frills. And people are in food poverty.
Shopping habits and the way shops try and have all the varieties of all the foods all the times leads to MASSIVE waste. How much food goes past date and gets slung out? Tons of food! We waste so much stuffs.
Energy also, lots of bad habits. Says I who has the heat on high and the lights turned on in the kitchen all the time so I don't have to fiddle with light switches in the other rooms the kitchen lights. I have bad habits too. I'm no paragon.
But the world is so complicated, and already set up so many kinds of wasteful, I don't know how to fix my own consumption, let alone all the world at once.
And I don't think most people will try very hard, or even think about it, until things get very difficult for them.
So I think things are going to get grim. Horrible crunch times. Not just here, all over.
Especially since, when the resources crunch, people start looking at their neighbours. And there's some damn big armies around.
The only consolation is people have been saying pretty much the exact same things for long times now, and we're still here. Dad used to think the end of the world was seriously nigh. Maybe he read too many dystopias too.
I keep looking at the problems and thinking some of them could fix each other if they turned around a bit. People need more housing, and things need to be more efficient. Build fancy science designed very good places, need less energy, maybe grow more stuff. Lots of jobs for lots of people making them all good. Lots of good places to live after they're built. And, granted, if they're nice enough the people building them probably won't be the people that can move into them, but repeated it might make difference.
I don't know though. Can't think big and complex enough. Think it's all going to fall down go boom.
Should probably eat breakfast and go think of something else.