What happens when technologies go transparent? when they become so common that we no longer think about them? What's happening with mobile phones in some countries is a case in point: the techno has gotten to a place when it's only noticed when someone doesn't have it: "What do you mean you don't have a cell phone?" This is an example of a technology in the process of going transparent.
One technology that is pretty much transparent in most of the "first" world is oil - and its derivatives. Oil based products, whether energy, plastic or synthetic materials, have gone effectively transparent. We rarely see these technologies any more: we take synthetics for granted; although the price of gas has goes up, we don't think that the gas will run out.
But what happens when it does? or as it does - run out, that is. Because it will - and according to at least one expert, it will run out a lot sooner than most of us would care to believe.
Salon recently published an interview with James Howard Kunstler author of "The Long Emergency" to discuss his predictions/scenarios of what life will be like when the "oil fiesta" is over - in 15 years.
Try to imagine all the things we do - including looking at this Web page - that presume abundant energy. The plastic in the computer you're using; the milk jug in your fridge; the clothes in your closet; the shoes on your feet; the cheap flight you took on holiday; the food in your grocery, trucked in from god knows where, but not your back yard, the dvd you rented.
Now imagine it gone.
Kunstler suggests that people at least in the States are too overwhelmed when presented with a scenario postulating the immanent demise of a way of life that they are in a state of denial. They won't consider it. And consequently the opportunity of a "smooth transition" from the Way It Is Now to the Way It (Soon) Will Be has been effectively lost.
Thus the question may worth be considering, what would we need to rebuild, reknow, relearn, regenerate, to get along in a world that may be more like the Victorians (or at least Neal Stephanson's digital version of that era [see the Diamond Age]) than the Space Family Robinson. Danger danger, Will Robinson: you're running out of oil.
What would we hate to lose most? how would we keep it?
What would it mean to become again far more locally/community oriented?
What would it be like not to be able to travel at the drop of a hat? or if Pirates once again became a formidable thread to global exchange of goods?
What would it mean if the suburbs collapsed?
These are hard things to imagine. Or not - there are periods of history that reflect these ways of being; there are parts of the globe today that live in this disconnected (but highly impacted) way. But we like to think of them as a part of the past, not our future.
How do we psychically and practically prepare for such a transition?
Posted by mc at May 19, 2005 01:46 PM