What do we do when there's little left to power our computers with?
Let me be upfront about one thing: I don't particularly want to be writing this blog. But as I am an unpublished writer completing his first book in this early twenty-first century of ours, for what should be obvious reasons, I am.
Excellent my friend!
Thanks!
Hi Allan, I met you briefly on Saturday at the Book Expo in Sydney. I liked this piece, I think you write well and I’m looking forward to seeing what else you have to offer.
What do you think provoked you to change course in the way you were living your life?
Thanks for the kind words, they’re much appreciated.
About transitioning from film to agriculture (and writing), I initially had two main motivations.
First off was the narcissism: the more successful I became the more the cult of personality seemed to take precedence. Upon completing what ended up becoming my final film, this reality escalated to an absurd level, and so I decided to refrain from submitting what was going to be my first entry into the short film program of the Toronto International Film Festival. (I then decided to make what became a temporary move into documentary filmmaking as I thought it would be worthwhile to concentrate on more productive ventures.)
Second, I wasn’t fully convinced that there was a net benefit to film. I couldn’t deny that there were films out there that covered important topics, and that were well done. But what was nagging at me was whether those few films outweighed all the other crud that’s out there. For one, did those few “beneficial” films and television programs justify us having one, two, or even three television sets in every household? Ultimately, and having made that late move over from fiction filmmaking to documentary filmmaking, I decided there wasn’t a net benefit, and so quit film altogether.
I did just happen to upload the latest blog post a few minutes ago, Lemminged: To be Herded off the Peak Oil Cliff by Filmmakers, which might illuminate my motivations a bit more for you.
Regarding how I got into agriculture, a few days after I decided to ditch fiction filmmaking (and university / film school) I was in my parents’ backyard with my dad and brother as they were about to lay down grass seed over the exposed soil. Staring at it all, the thought popped into my head “why don’t we build a garden back here?” About two seconds later my dad said out loud “why don’t we build a garden back here?” And so it went.
In terms of getting into writing, a year later, and once again only a few days after deciding to quit documentary filmmaking and so film altogether, the core question that led me to decide to write a book “conveniently” popped into my head.
I find it hard to explain how misguided this viewpoint is as a prediction. I came here from John Michael Greer’s even more misguided column
(http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.com/2015/04/the-death-of-internet-pre-mortem.html) but he doesn’t allow open comments, apparently.
Here’s the analytical mistake: the Internet is being compared to one-way broadcast media (like movies, TV, radio). The Internet is in actual fact a two-way communications device (like the telephone, telegraph, postal service).
We have NEVER gone backwards on two-way communications. We humans apparently love to talk to each other, and especially to faraway people. The telephone destroyed the telegraph. The Internet is displacing the telephone and most of the letter-writing functions of the postal service.
And yes, governments spied on the postal service. And governments tapped phones. The same pattern continues on the Internet. And people protested and created a legal system to punish government officials who did that… or in the USSR, people just started speaking in code, calling from unexpected phones, etc. People didn’t stop using the phone. And that sort of cat-and-mouse behavior has already occured on the Internet and will continue to. Think about all the functions of telephones, telegraphs, and letters; the Internet is doing all of them now.
Has any rural area, anywhere in the world, actually lost telephone service? (Permanently, I mean, rather than temporarily until it could be fixed.) Only when new tech (the Internet! Cellphones!) replaced it. Likewise, telegraphs were never removed from any location until the telephones replaced them. There is practically nowhere in the world which has lost postal mail service, and absolutely nowhere which has done so without getting telephones first… Even in the middle of the most brutal war of the 20th century, WWI, telephones were everywhere. Even in the trenches.
Communications tech does not go away until it is replaced by better communications tech. This is an exception to the general rule of tech.
The Internet isn’t going anywhere; it certainly isn’t going away. There’s no tech which is going to replace it; or to put it another way, whatever tech replaces it will still be called “the Internet”. The underlying tech has been replaced several times, from copper cable to fiber optics to wireless – but the Internet can be used over carrier pigeon (google it). I don’t see a replacement. Ever. I have done my research on what’s needed to (a) maintain and (b) build Internet connections using current tech. It’s not bad if you live near Corning. 
Nowadays you need chip fabs, fiber-optic fabs, a large silicon supply (easy) and small supplies of other metals (harder but quite possible).
Very true that “We have NEVER gone backwards on two-way communications.” However, the continual advancements you are referring to are not so much due to human ingenuity as much as they are to the availability of cheap fossil fuels which allowed for it all. Decreasing EROEI levels, increasing prices for oil, and decreasing supplies of rare earth metals all point towards diminishing returns, and thus, the Internet’s eventual demise. It doesn’t matter how much “We humans apparently love to talk to each other,” because when it comes down to it, energy trumps it all. We’ll still talk, no doubt, but it’ll be via less energy intensive methods, and with systems which aren’t dependant on multi-million (if not multi-billion) dollar chip factories. We simply won’t have the resources for such things.
Firstly, though I disagree with many of your perspectives this is a well written blog.
I believe your concerns about energy production, specifically peak-oil, and its correlation to computer production are misplaced. Solar energy costs are now reaching parity with coal and green energy investment has surpassed fossil fuel investment. This is an important metric that demonstrates that fossil fuels are not the be all end all for energy production and green energy is taking over. The battery that Musk has released (when it eventually becomes affordable enough) will provide an avenue for decentralized energy production. An energy revolution is occurring as we speak that has the potential to create abundance and take power away from industry.
Plastics and metals for production are an issue, but recycling is getting better in many regards and alternative materials are constantly being developed. Crystal drives are be developed that don’t decay like magnetic drives and can be “grown”, nano computers that work on atomic levels are developing - slowly albeit, and each generation of chips are more efficient than the last. As resources are depleted new methods of computing will be developed accordingly.
The Outernet Project and Google (among several others) are developing ways to get free wireless internet across the globe specifically to address rural access.
Technology is a pencil, eye glasses, and many other things NOT digital; this point I think gets lost in modern debate concerning technology.
Lastly, your experiences with cognition are anecdotal and based on your personal behavioral patterns. I use the internet and a digital device very often yet I feel no need to incessantly check my email or Facebook or anything else. If I am depressed I will spent extra time doing mindless things online, but that’s no different than my offline behaviors.
I have learned a great deal of the knowledge I have accumulated through the internet, to the point that many of my current university studies (in economics and politics as a returning adult) just seem like outdated and rehashed topics.
I’m also a musician who studies lutherie, both are interests that require long in-depth attention and have long learning curves. Again most of my personal development in these fields has been enabled by the internet. Tools are innate, it is how we use them that matters. Some of cognitive challenges you mention are of course real and require attention and inquiry. However, I believe that predominately these are greater societal questions about behavior and conditioning less than they are about machines/technology forcing us to act in a particular manner.
In any case, the internet isn’t going anywhere. The resource depletion required for your scenario would also indicate a global food/transportation/medical/poverty/energy crisis that would make the lack of internet inconsequential comparatively.
My major problem with this “renewable” energy thing is that those renewables are dependent on fossil fuels for their production. Put a bit differently, they have low EROEIs (Energy Return on Energy Input), and so don’t have the output to perpetuate themselves, as well as to supply us with the energy we want. While oil’s EROEI used to be around 100:1 a hundred years ago, it’s now down to 15:1 or so. Even worse, and according to Charles Hall in his short book Spain’s Photovoltaic Revolution, solar’s EROEI is around 2.35:1. While such things may provide worthwhile assistance on our way down the slope of de-industrialization (and with decentralization), I don’t see them as being a replacement for our large usage of fossil fuels in the slightest (Ted Trainer’s rather textbook-ish book, Renewable Energy Cannot Sustain A Consumer Society, mentioned in my Peak Oil Primer, readily covers this topic). Making comparisons between current prices unfortunately misses all this. Similarly, it is these realities which I use to base my questioning of the Internet’s longevity upon.
And you’re absolutely right that my observations with cognition are anecdotal. Not only that, but seeing how others experience things in different ways, it may very well be that I’m on the worse end of the spectrum. That being said, I just put up a post on this a couple of days ago called Too Much Internet Crack, which refers to pieces that have covered the scientific studies behind this.
And the notion of yours that “a global food/transportation/medical/poverty/energy crisis… would make the lack of internet inconsequential comparatively”? Well, yes, exactly. Or otherwise put, with so much now dependent on the Internet, such a dependency would make such crises possibly that much worse. Hence, I think, the need to learn about these things and localize ourselves while the going’s relatively easy.
Hmmm…
I think JMG and you misunderstand what the “internet” IS - it is a network of networks a way of getting electronic devices to talk to each other and deliver some sort of info to people.
I think both you and JMG are right that the current setup of the networking of networks is not sustainable in its current usage as a reliable media providing, 24/7, no lag, service of distraction for the masses. - HOWEVER- that some remnant of it will continue, probably run on alternative power, less pervasive, and offering less diverse type of content WILL continue- as long as two computers are running that people want to be able to send info to. The energy costs of the routers and switches behind networking can be significantly reduced and that is already the next frontier for electronic/telecom industries. Simple text based web pages and minimal multi-media usage would also significantly reduce the overhead the current internet takes.
Sure this is a lot different that how most people think the internet is going to go (streaming the latest sparkly vampire fantasy to my holodeck!) but the technology of information and networking is flexible and adaptable if nothing else. Look at 3rd world nations where more people have internet access than running water or reliable power- the IT infrastructure adapts flexibly. Sure they aren’t often watching movies or buying the latest fashions on amazon dot com but they do send emails, tweets, Facebook, and read web pages of information.
Now, once computers can no longer be made or maintained- at any cost- you might have a point. I kind of think though that the utility of computers is such that they will hang on a lot longer than much of the rest of industrial civilization (they complement weapons of war very well for example).
I would expect that internet globally will first become a library/school/business and government thing with only the really rich having their own dedicated connection, probably because of the expense of maintaining the computer ahead of the expense of internet. But the “internet” will remain. The fiber optic cables in the ground, the switches and routers will be on for some part of the time, the email you send make take 2 days to arrive instead of 2 hours, and might not allow for any attachments.
Well, yes, what you’re saying does make sense, which is what I meant when I referred to the “slow and comparatively uneventful demise of the Internet.” I certainly don’t see it as something happening overnight or even over a year, but over several years if not decades.
You make the point that “Simple text based web pages and minimal multi-media usage would also significantly reduce the overhead the current internet takes.” If I’m not mistaken, this refers to some kind of desire or need to downsize our use of the Internet. That would happen either because we wanted to burn up less fossil fuels, because we wanted to dedicate ourselves to other activities, or due to a collapsing Internet (which is, I think, the more likely).
Reduced energy costs for routers and switches can only stave off problems for so long, and is also something dependent on high sales. If the sales can’t keep up then their economies of scale no longer work either. Meanwhile, as energy supplies continue to dry up, prices will increase as well, resulting in higher priced goods, less affordability, fewer purchases, and so forth. How long until we see that beginning, and the time-frame over which it will occur, I can’t say.