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#129429 - 04/06/08 04:38 PM Networked Cultures More Fragile
MartinFocazio Offline

Pooh-Bah

Registered: 01/21/03
Posts: 2203
Loc: Bucks County PA
I subscribe to a magazine called "The New Scientist" which has a cover article this week about the collapse of civilization.

It's dry, scientific and not at all the typical TEOTWAWKI stuff. It proposes a direct connection between "just in time" modern capitalism, the fundamental difference between a "network economy" and the older hierarchical, or vertical economy. Some of the ideas included the idea that the "obsolete" model of holding inventory and the inefficiencies therein are actually very important.

There was a simple statement in the article which got my undivided attention - "There are products in the world that are only made in a single factory".

In the end, it's described as a lack of energy (as in sources of) and an overwhelming level of complex interdependencies that leads to the collapse of civilizations. It's interesting to me that the locally autonomous economy simply doesn't exist at all, anywhere, except in the most desperately poor parts of the world where susinence farmers eke out a living off the land. If I were to look at even a small almost-city of, say 70,000 homes, there's no way that city could really function as an autonomous unit, feeding, housing and clothing itself, much less supplying the energy needed for that number of people, without global commerce.

Anyway, I have nothing really to say other than I hope that my kids are smart, resourceful and good with a gun, because the next 100 years look really nasty.




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#129430 - 04/06/08 04:51 PM Re: Networked Cultures More Fragile [Re: MartinFocazio]
wildman800 Offline
Carpal Tunnel

Registered: 11/09/06
Posts: 2846
Loc: La-USA
I refer to Murphy's Law Nr 3: It's the 25cent part that fails & brings the monstrously complex machine to a halt, @ the worse possible moment!!



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The best luck is what you make yourself!

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#129435 - 04/06/08 05:58 PM Re: Networked Cultures More Fragile [Re: MartinFocazio]
ironraven Offline
Cranky Geek
Carpal Tunnel

Registered: 09/08/05
Posts: 4642
Loc: Vermont
Not surprised, but working IT will give you that opinion.

If only more people new how many bits have to function just right...
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-IronRaven

When a man dare not speak without malice for fear of giving insult, that is when truth starts to die. Truth is the truest freedom.

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#129456 - 04/06/08 10:30 PM Re: Networked Cultures More Fragile [Re: MartinFocazio]
philip Offline
Addict

Registered: 09/19/05
Posts: 639
Loc: San Francisco Bay Area
I've read this for forty years. It used to be nuclear winter, when we'd all freeze to death. Then it was overcrowding meant no more farms, and we'd all starve to death. Or prices of commodities would zoom into the stratosphere and cause the earth to fall over (or something like that - it's bad if things are in the stratosphere).

I can't remember how many different reasons I've read about why Rome fell. Army overstretched, acceptance of homosexuality, and many other reasons, depending on the agenda of the writer.

I've read that the world is going to end or the US will fail, the world economy will spiral into devastating inflation, or PHRASECENSOREDPOSTERSHOULDKNOWBETTER. will take over for about forty years. Everybody had convincing arguments, but they've all been wrong so far. We all remember Malthus saying we couldn't continue in urban environments because there would be so much horse manure on the streets we'd choke on it. I'd say this is the same argument - "Social organizations become steadily more complex as they are required to deal both with environmental problems and with challenges from neighbouring societies that are also becoming more complex." "Problems are inevitable." "Innovation itself might be subject to diminishing returns, or perhaps absolute limits." We're all doomed, I've read over and over.

I figure the next hundred years will see more doomsday writing with different problems, just like the last hundred years. :-> I'll predict that nothing considered in this article will come true, just like nothing in all those other articles I read came true.

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#129465 - 04/07/08 12:48 AM Re: Networked Cultures More Fragile [Re: philip]
TS_Shawn Offline
Newbie

Registered: 03/11/08
Posts: 38
Loc: Washington, D.C.
It seems as if every generation at some point thinks Life As We Know It will end with that generation.

Cormac McCarthy's "The Road" made survival after apocalypse entirely unappealing. Since I don't wish to survive that horror, it's one off the to-do list. [ I remain amazed that Oprah plugged that book ]

America's population has been mostly urban for a long while. Even before the era of just-in-time inventories, in a dire scenario the cities would have been desperate places pretty quick. I sure wouldn't want to be around here when the supermarkets emptied out. Don't think it would have been any less dire in the 1970s.

Even if everyone had a couple acres and plenty of seeds, a society addicted to Doritos, juice boxes, Big Macs and other processed foods would have a hard adjustment.

How long does it take to grow carrot sticks?

My household is in very good shape to deal with a month or so of deprivation. Keep the gas tanks topped off most of the time, have bikes and bike trailers, loads of camping gear, a camping trailer in storage near the mountains.

But the grim reality of a long-term disaster, economic catastrophe or mass evac while living in the DC-Boston corridor overloads my circuits.

While the economic theory is interesting, I believe the most plausible horrific non-natural disaster is a dirty bomb or bio attack where the damage would be localized. Probably in DC or New York City.

Quite possibly in my zip code.

Really need to put "move" higher up on the to-do list.








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#129494 - 04/07/08 02:37 PM Re: Networked Cultures More Fragile [Re: philip]
Brangdon Offline
Veteran

Registered: 12/12/04
Posts: 1204
Loc: Nottingham, UK
On the other hand, civilisations do rise and fall. My country, Britain, has been much more influential in the past than it is today. We get used to situations quite quickly, and then it seems they have lasted for every and will always last forever: but they never do.

And contrariwise, sometimes the doomsayers are identifying a real threat, and the reason it doesn't come to pass is because people addressed it and averted it, which might not have happened without the fore-warning.

Just because you've been OK up until now doesn't mean you should be complacent about the future.
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Quality is addictive.

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#129501 - 04/07/08 03:55 PM Re: Networked Cultures More Fragile [Re: MartinFocazio]
Arney Offline
Pooh-Bah

Registered: 09/15/05
Posts: 2485
Loc: California
Originally Posted By: martinfocazio
I subscribe to a magazine called "The New Scientist" which has a cover article this week about the collapse of civilization.

Martin, this is a surprisingly TEOTWAWKI post from you! wink

One common feature of these doomsday predictions/essays is to take a current trend and extend it indefinitely and assume that society doesn't otherwise adapt to largely negate it. I mean, like the end of oil. Yes, we'll eventually use most of it up, but knowing human ingenuity, we probably will have found a different energy source by then and the world will look very different than the predictions. We switched from wood to coal to oil. What's next? I think we could be very surprised by what that next energy source turns out to be because of some yet-undiscovered breakthrough in technology. Personally, I would like to avoid becoming a human battery like in the movie The Matrix, so hopefully our scientists come up with a different solution than that to oil. wink

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#129506 - 04/07/08 04:56 PM Re: Networked Cultures More Fragile [Re: Arney]
MoBOB Offline
Veteran

Registered: 09/17/07
Posts: 1219
Loc: here
Being a human battery is the only way some people will ever have of "hooking up with a hottie". So, maybe it isn't all that bad. wink
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#129509 - 04/07/08 05:42 PM Re: Networked Cultures More Fragile [Re: MoBOB]
Dan_McI Offline
Old Hand

Registered: 12/10/07
Posts: 844
Loc: NYC
I think that hiccups in the transportation / supply system can reveal problems with how companies today use the idea of "just in time" for inventory and supplies. When a ship hits s torm, when a train derails, when there is a traffic accident or delay, the goods make not get to wehre they are needed "just in time." However, I think seeing the collapse of a society because the trucks are delayed is a bit much. Of course, if the system slows down and becomes less predictable, then the idea of "just in time" becomes harder to do and use. But if things get really unpredictable, I think companies would revert to former systems and carry some more inventory.

The companies and economies however are going to take a hit because of it. However, if it was the deteriorating infrastructure that delayed supplies, you'd have a sign that the economy was already having difficulty. The falling apart of the ability to transport safely is a bigger deal than the timing of it.

I think TEOTWAKI can come for a number of reasons, but it will in all liklihood not be solely one reason. The problem is we do not have many examples to look at for the fall of a civilization. Rome fell apart over a long period of time, but we live in a very different world. The Mayan and Mycenaean civilizations both fell apart, but I think the evidence as to why is very sketchy in both cases.

Preparing for TEOTWAKI is something most post on this forum have though some about and many have tried to prepare some, just in case. That's the whole idea of preparing, just in case something happens. The Dark Ages were not fun to live through relative to most of the Roman times, but the human race survived, thanks to some who had short and/or hard existences. Who knows what happens when our societies fall apart.

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#129515 - 04/07/08 06:31 PM Re: Networked Cultures More Fragile [Re: NightHiker]
BobS Offline
Old Hand

Registered: 02/08/08
Posts: 924
Loc: Toledo Ohio
Society is not going to collapse because any given item is only made in one factory. I would guess the reason for it only being made in one place is that there are laws to prevent others from making it or that one factory manufacturing them is more then enough to fill the consumer demand for the product.


Both of these will go out the window if society were to collapse as necessity will dictate the rules.


I don’t think society can collapse for any length of time, it can’t be un-invented. You can singe it some, but the human spirit won’t be crushed. Governments can, but who says we need our present government to have a society? If governments fall, something else will take it’s place, another government. Just as it did in Rome.

Rome may have fallen, but that was a government, not society.
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You can run, but you'll only die tired.


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