I believe that we may be in a Seldon crisis, or pre crisis anyway.
I don’t know whether nuclear war or the next pandemic will precipitate it but our over reliance on our present technology will be the cause.
It would not take many people to not go to work for our present infrastructure to crumble. It would only take a few days without electricity for our cell phone system to fail. A little longer for us to have no access to the internet. Add no running water and sewer system and we are quickly back to the Middle Ages.
Why is this a problem?
All of humanity’s knowledge base is in the internet. This includes repair and operating manuals and we would have no access to it.
Seldon called for the creation of an encyclopedia and a cadre of intellectuals. I think that, at least, this potential crisis calls for an investment in libraries and maybe in a civil defense force.
Thanks so much for your comment. As a still new substacker, I'm having some trouble getting noticed here. I look forward to the time that a comment isn't an occasion for celebration :)
Indeed this does feel like a Seldon Crisis, and we're not even to the supposed Singularity yet. I don't want to minimize the possibilitiy of collapse. It's certainly possible that the AI bubble could pop, a new and much more dangerous pandemic could arise, or the ever present danger of nuclear war could finally materialize and everyone will be shocked, thinking that was a danger back in the 20th century - but surely not now!
I'm not as worried about losing our knowledge base though, as long as we have the capability of distributed sources of electrical power. The millions of households with solar panels could be our saving grace. Unlike in the Mad Max movies, it won't likely be fossil fuels that will be the power source lusted over, but instead the quiet clean power in off-grid capable houses with working laptop computers that have local copies of LLMs with a lot more knowedge contained than any university or mega monastery in the middle ages.
The preppers - at least the ones savvy enough to know their tech - could still have their day.
I believe that we may be in a Seldon crisis, or pre crisis anyway.
I don’t know whether nuclear war or the next pandemic will precipitate it but our over reliance on our present technology will be the cause.
It would not take many people to not go to work for our present infrastructure to crumble. It would only take a few days without electricity for our cell phone system to fail. A little longer for us to have no access to the internet. Add no running water and sewer system and we are quickly back to the Middle Ages.
Why is this a problem?
All of humanity’s knowledge base is in the internet. This includes repair and operating manuals and we would have no access to it.
Seldon called for the creation of an encyclopedia and a cadre of intellectuals. I think that, at least, this potential crisis calls for an investment in libraries and maybe in a civil defense force.
Thoughts?
Thanks so much for your comment. As a still new substacker, I'm having some trouble getting noticed here. I look forward to the time that a comment isn't an occasion for celebration :)
Indeed this does feel like a Seldon Crisis, and we're not even to the supposed Singularity yet. I don't want to minimize the possibilitiy of collapse. It's certainly possible that the AI bubble could pop, a new and much more dangerous pandemic could arise, or the ever present danger of nuclear war could finally materialize and everyone will be shocked, thinking that was a danger back in the 20th century - but surely not now!
I'm not as worried about losing our knowledge base though, as long as we have the capability of distributed sources of electrical power. The millions of households with solar panels could be our saving grace. Unlike in the Mad Max movies, it won't likely be fossil fuels that will be the power source lusted over, but instead the quiet clean power in off-grid capable houses with working laptop computers that have local copies of LLMs with a lot more knowedge contained than any university or mega monastery in the middle ages.
The preppers - at least the ones savvy enough to know their tech - could still have their day.