Maybe if you add modern computer-assisted routing both for cars (intellectual central dispatch) and for passengers (smart phone apps), and add self-driving small cars to the mix, it can become more realistic. And we don't have to replace all cars overnight. This can happen gradually, extending the network reach and usefulness area by area.
I hope that eventually logic will prevail and properly organized mass transit (including maybe self-driving taxi cabs) will replace most of the private cars. Then we will not have to argue about the little details like individual vehicle range, styling or retail price.
Agreed. It's a shame; if the submitter did not use the word "rich" so inappropriately, we could have a meaningful discussion about why people with a degree used to work less and now have to work more, and maybe what could be done about that.
I think the reasons are the consumerism (also in regards to homes and college degrees) and unpaid overtime, and the solution is to actively run away from both if your time is valuable to you. Buy what you can afford, don't waste money excessively only because credit is available, and switch jobs until you find one with suitable time balance.
If you are a freelancer, or one of the company owners/founders, and you do that because that's how you prefer to spend your time, then it's up to you whether you count it as work.
If you have to do this because of your manager's expectations or peer pressure, when you would prefer to do other things, then yes, I would say it counts as work.
And yes, a lot of our modern "work" is not as physically straining as the jobs 100 years ago, but it is still work, and it may be hard and stressful sometimes.
The troubling situation is when the top management expects from their employees the level of commitment that only makes sense for the owners with much higher stakes and potential pay-off.
That may be the case now, at least I like to believe it, too. The problem is, the corporations have no soul, and the next CTO / board / whoever makes decisions may have different priorities.
And more generally, if you are the world's leader in fetching, organizing and navigating the information, it puts you in a great position to jump on new trends.
I believe Google's business plan goes like this:
1. Master the world's information flow.
2. Make some money in the process.
3. Invest in promising new technology.
4. Strengthen your competitive advantage even more.
5. Massive profit.
6. World domination.
See? No "???" item.
As a technocratic optimist, I am glad that this plan extends the human knowledge and power. But I'm also worried that this power will likely be concentrated in one mega-corporation.
This is okay. Twitter is labelled as a "microblogging" platform, but many people use it as a multicast IM, or just a newsfeed app. Not to mention the bots.
I thought most modern telescopes used mirrors instead of lenses to avoid diffraction. Well, maybe there are still some lenses left in the system, or maybe we can switch back to lenses if this works. Also, the research is interesting anyway.
I won't cry for iPhone; if it gets to that, this won't be my biggest problem. It's okay if we use something simpler for a while, even switch back to wired in the worst case.
How much did things fall after the fall of the Roman Empire? Did the civilization collapse? Did people switch back to hunting and gathering?
No, I'm not an economist, but even I can understand that as resources get more scarce, the demand will gradually shift to more sustainable sources, because they will become price competitive.
And I also understand that both the demand and supply trends change on a qualitative level with introduction of disruptive technology like internet, electric cars, space-based solar power or asteroid mining. You cannot simply draw two lines and say "when these lines cross, civilization collapses".
I argue that it would take very close to zero population to destroy the industrial civilization. Any declines possible from the factors described in TFA do not come anywhere close.
Second, when the knowledge is available, the whole bootstrapping process can be worked through much faster than the historical R&D scale.
And last, a lot of industrial production is possible without computers. Logarithmic rulers were still in wide usage during the Apollo project. And there was at least 100 years of industrial civilization before that.
They may well be talking about a real problem, but they use inappropriate words.
"Collapse" means suddenly crumble, cease to exist.
"Industrial civilization" is a civilization that has an organized industry (as opposed to just individual craftsmen and unique items production).
Can you really imagine the ecological / economical limits described here to eliminate every sort of organized production on Earth? Or even set it back more than a decade?
They also overlook the adaptability of demand when the supply shortens, and the number of disruptive technologies appearing every day, rendering moot any such "if the trend continues" analysis.
Exactly. The authors fail to account for both the adaptability of the demand, and for the rate at which disruptive technologies appear these days, making any such "static world" analysis meaningless.
I imagine this study is an attempt to justify space colonization, but no matter how much I support this in principle, this particular attempt is executed very poorly. Basically just rehashing the old "ecological capacity" and "peak resource" arguments, and over-dramatizing potential problems with obvious hype like "civilization collapse".
I cannot imagine how we could have a real collapse of our civilization, unless you really stretch the word definition. Even in the most catastrophic scenarios like a nuclear war or a dinosaur-scale meteor hit, enough people should survive to gradually rebuild it to the current level.
And the risks mentioned here, like resource shortage, conventional war and economic problems cannot even lead to that sort of "collapse". The words you might consider are "crisis", "depression" or maybe "decline".
It would take a true cosmic scale disaster to destroy our civilization at this point, something that would make life impossible anywhere on the surface or under it in a very short time. Even then, if we had an early warning, we could try to relocate enough people off the planet.
If you want your research to be taken seriously, please avoid sensationalist overstatements like this.
Exactly. This is just one MP talking out of stress. It only shows how hot the situation is in the internal discussions. Most likely, he will be disciplined, and if the news catches on, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs might release a rebuttal to the effect of "misinterpreted / not our official position". Non-story.
Slashdot Mirror
Maybe if you add modern computer-assisted routing both for cars (intellectual central dispatch) and for passengers (smart phone apps), and add self-driving small cars to the mix, it can become more realistic. And we don't have to replace all cars overnight. This can happen gradually, extending the network reach and usefulness area by area.
I hope that eventually logic will prevail and properly organized mass transit (including maybe self-driving taxi cabs) will replace most of the private cars. Then we will not have to argue about the little details like individual vehicle range, styling or retail price.
Agreed. It's a shame; if the submitter did not use the word "rich" so inappropriately, we could have a meaningful discussion about why people with a degree used to work less and now have to work more, and maybe what could be done about that.
I think the reasons are the consumerism (also in regards to homes and college degrees) and unpaid overtime, and the solution is to actively run away from both if your time is valuable to you. Buy what you can afford, don't waste money excessively only because credit is available, and switch jobs until you find one with suitable time balance.
I guess higher income also opens more options for entertainment.
If you are a freelancer, or one of the company owners/founders, and you do that because that's how you prefer to spend your time, then it's up to you whether you count it as work.
If you have to do this because of your manager's expectations or peer pressure, when you would prefer to do other things, then yes, I would say it counts as work.
And yes, a lot of our modern "work" is not as physically straining as the jobs 100 years ago, but it is still work, and it may be hard and stressful sometimes.
The troubling situation is when the top management expects from their employees the level of commitment that only makes sense for the owners with much higher stakes and potential pay-off.
You must also grow a mustache, otherwise it only changes your sitting-down-still problems to standing-up-still problems.
That may be the case now, at least I like to believe it, too. The problem is, the corporations have no soul, and the next CTO / board / whoever makes decisions may have different priorities.
And more generally, if you are the world's leader in fetching, organizing and navigating the information, it puts you in a great position to jump on new trends.
I believe Google's business plan goes like this:
1. Master the world's information flow.
2. Make some money in the process.
3. Invest in promising new technology.
4. Strengthen your competitive advantage even more.
5. Massive profit.
6. World domination.
See? No "???" item.
As a technocratic optimist, I am glad that this plan extends the human knowledge and power. But I'm also worried that this power will likely be concentrated in one mega-corporation.
This is okay. Twitter is labelled as a "microblogging" platform, but many people use it as a multicast IM, or just a newsfeed app. Not to mention the bots.
Maybe I should set up a $100 Enceladus submarine competition. That should speed things up.
Or maybe let's crowdsource a $250,000 Lunar Base Challenge for NASA?
The possibilities are endless.
Okay, mistware.
I thought most modern telescopes used mirrors instead of lenses to avoid diffraction. Well, maybe there are still some lenses left in the system, or maybe we can switch back to lenses if this works. Also, the research is interesting anyway.
I won't cry for iPhone; if it gets to that, this won't be my biggest problem. It's okay if we use something simpler for a while, even switch back to wired in the worst case.
How much did things fall after the fall of the Roman Empire? Did the civilization collapse? Did people switch back to hunting and gathering?
No, I'm not an economist, but even I can understand that as resources get more scarce, the demand will gradually shift to more sustainable sources, because they will become price competitive.
And I also understand that both the demand and supply trends change on a qualitative level with introduction of disruptive technology like internet, electric cars, space-based solar power or asteroid mining. You cannot simply draw two lines and say "when these lines cross, civilization collapses".
I argue that it would take very close to zero population to destroy the industrial civilization. Any declines possible from the factors described in TFA do not come anywhere close.
First, such a major setback is not very likely.
Second, when the knowledge is available, the whole bootstrapping process can be worked through much faster than the historical R&D scale.
And last, a lot of industrial production is possible without computers. Logarithmic rulers were still in wide usage during the Apollo project. And there was at least 100 years of industrial civilization before that.
They may well be talking about a real problem, but they use inappropriate words.
"Collapse" means suddenly crumble, cease to exist.
"Industrial civilization" is a civilization that has an organized industry (as opposed to just individual craftsmen and unique items production).
Can you really imagine the ecological / economical limits described here to eliminate every sort of organized production on Earth? Or even set it back more than a decade?
They also overlook the adaptability of demand when the supply shortens, and the number of disruptive technologies appearing every day, rendering moot any such "if the trend continues" analysis.
Exactly. The authors fail to account for both the adaptability of the demand, and for the rate at which disruptive technologies appear these days, making any such "static world" analysis meaningless.
I imagine this study is an attempt to justify space colonization, but no matter how much I support this in principle, this particular attempt is executed very poorly. Basically just rehashing the old "ecological capacity" and "peak resource" arguments, and over-dramatizing potential problems with obvious hype like "civilization collapse".
Survival of H. sapiens != survival of civilization
Yes, and collapse of iPhone sales != collapse of industrial civilization.
I cannot imagine how we could have a real collapse of our civilization, unless you really stretch the word definition. Even in the most catastrophic scenarios like a nuclear war or a dinosaur-scale meteor hit, enough people should survive to gradually rebuild it to the current level.
And the risks mentioned here, like resource shortage, conventional war and economic problems cannot even lead to that sort of "collapse". The words you might consider are "crisis", "depression" or maybe "decline".
It would take a true cosmic scale disaster to destroy our civilization at this point, something that would make life impossible anywhere on the surface or under it in a very short time. Even then, if we had an early warning, we could try to relocate enough people off the planet.
If you want your research to be taken seriously, please avoid sensationalist overstatements like this.
The fact that people are different, and the ones attacking you are not the ones who will suffer most from your bombing.
No-one would do that except maybe some comic book villain.
Yep. The nukes would not help Ukraine in the current crisis. You have to be a crazy dictator to get any of the benefits.
This is just one MP expressing his personal disappointment with the slow reaction of the West.
Exactly. This is just one MP talking out of stress. It only shows how hot the situation is in the internal discussions. Most likely, he will be disciplined, and if the news catches on, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs might release a rebuttal to the effect of "misinterpreted / not our official position". Non-story.