I love thinking about the extreme future, it's one of my passions or compulsions. I can't seem to figure it out. One of the topics I think about most when I visualize the extreme future is the extreme past. Perhaps it's actual history but sometimes I like to think of fabled history. My favorite is Atlantis. I don't imagine it in Plato's vision of ancient the Greek lost continent. Moreover I see it as an idea or riddle about a people who used the power of the 'crystal' to create great technological advancements, to rule the world and perhaps even reach the stars. This is just an idea of an alternate reality, a Foundation, in Isaac Assimov terms. Certainly this never happened. We've never unearthed remnants of a 'higher technology' or cities rivaling our own. But what if... What if there was a civilization that was able to harness physics and create technology to such a degree that all their learning throughout the ages went into the technology? The books and passed down knowledge all became synthesized that in a sense without the technology it didn't any longer exist in reality; it became 'virtual'. If the virtual membrane was shattered all knowledge lost. Man is back into the stone age, no better off than 10 millennia before, living in caves, wallowing in the dirt, eking out a marginal existence, struggling to survive.
How are we like this culture? Most of us can remember a time not long ago when our mother's would make actual meals, bake bread, sow clothes. When our father's would mow their own grass, grow vegetables, change their own oil and wash the car. Lessons in penmanship had as much to do with the ability to legibly write and mentally conceptualize. Books and the Library were the sources of knowledge and it was hard bound, built on ages of knowledge and here to stay.
The year is 2013 and students in the first grade are being instructed in iPad. Most students use the Library on their college campuses for free WiFi and a quiet space to study more than they do for books. Children grow up thinking meals come from a Fast Food Chain and not the farm. Cooking is now matrix of mixing pre-made ingredients. All domestic tasks from home cleaning, childcare and your morning coffee are being farmed out to strangers.
The 'Third Wave' began in the 1990's and blossomed in the 2000's. It is totally conceivable and extremely realistic that within a decade or two all knowledge that humankind has will be digitally based. All that we have for the basis of our own day to day sustenance will be carried out by 'others' (increasingly robotic in orientation). Even our own human core selves will begin to evolve and be augmented to keep pace with the machines we've created.
I assure you I am no luddite; I fully believe and am deeply excited about the future both near and far. I think the capabilities on so many fronts that we are on the verge of breaking through on are mind-blowing.
My thought is this: What if the technology we grow so dependent on is lost? Think about it this way: if the technology 125 years ago was lost how far back would those people be? Most of the things they do to survive they already know and practice everyday. To put it another way. Sure, the greatest Bass fishermen alive probably lives today but how many of us know how to fish Bass? And the reason that guy is the greatest Bass fisherman ever is thanks to hundreds of years of bass fishing. Get the point? Most of us don't know shit. We know how to send emails, write code, make proposals, offer incentives. But we are losing our grasp on the sustenance of 'organic life.'
If today a EMP detonation high above the sky devastated our technological infrastructure where would we be? Imagine that scenario in 20-50 years. We do not have the ability to survive this. Cities would become bloodbaths in the fight for survival. Gangs would rise around Warlords looking to control and profit on the short supply of resources. If cut off from routine shipments most inner-city grocery stores would run out of food in a few days. Looting, rioting would engulf and destroy the cities from within. Those who make it to the outlying areas and the 'country' would find Warlords and bandits holding ground there making passage treacherous and next to impossible. Barbarism and chaos run rampant...
The further we get from the 'Dark Ages' the more probable of it's return. Steps backward and forward along the ladder of human evolution are nothing new. Even if Atlantis never existed mankind has had its share of near misses. The Roman's were on the verge of a technological breakthrough with physics 2000 years before Einstein yet they were sacked by the barbarian Vandals and Goths. America, the Rome of our times sits upon this tenuous stack holding the framework of of this global hierarchy in her hands. If something happens to America the chain reaction would be a domino effect of chaos felt in every corner throughout the world
