Home » Posts tagged 'technology' (Page 3)
Tag Archives: technology
Eagle Ford Shale–A Preview of Permian Decline
Eagle Ford Shale–A Preview of Permian Decline The Eagle Ford Shale was the hottest play in the United States a little more than a decade ago. In mid-2012, there were twice as many rigs drilling horizontal wells in the Eagle Ford as there were in the Permian basin. Figure 1. Map showing U.S. shale plays. […]
Capitalism Cannot Turn Into Anything But Autocracy
Capitalism Cannot Turn Into Anything But Autocracy …only to disintegrate altogether soon after Photo by SpaceX on Unsplash The history of capitalism has an arc of its own. It has a beginning, a high point, and yes, an end — with or without revolutions, climate change or ecological destruction. Capitalism follows a trajectory of natural evolution culminating in a […]
Today’s Contemplation: Collapse Cometh CLV–Planetary Boundaries, Narrative Management, and Technology
Today’s Contemplation: Collapse Cometh CLV October 23, 2023 Mexico (1988). Photo by author. Planetary Boundaries, Narrative Management, and Technology As I continue to work on Part 4 of my multipart Contemplation regarding energy blindness (see: Part 1 Medium, Part 2 Medium, Part 3 Blog Medium), I offer a handful of recent comments I shared on a […]
Today’s Contemplation: Collapse Cometh CLIII–Carbon Tunnel Vision and Resource/Energy & Ecological Blindness, Part 3
Today’s Contemplation: Collapse Cometh CLIII October 6, 2023 Mexico (1988). Photo by author. Carbon Tunnel Vision and Resource/Energy & Ecological Blindness, Part 3 As ecologist Howard T. Odum argues in the quote above, human ‘progress’ has been the result of our species’ leveraging of available ‘power’[1]. Humans are not unique in this but for a […]
Today’s Contemplation: Collapse Cometh II; Feeding the Growth Monster: Fiat Currency and Technology
Today’s Contemplation: Collapse Cometh II August 8, 2020 Monte Alban, Mexico (1988) Photo by author. Feeding the Growth Monster: Fiat Currency and Technology My response to an ongoing discussion regarding debt-/credit-based fiat currency and it’s impact on our pursuing the infinite growth chalice. _____ Yes, credit-/debt-based fiat is certainly one of the most significant causes […]
Stop Using the Word ‘Sustainability’ for God’s Sake
Stop Using the Word ‘Sustainability’ for God’s Sake No. This is not sustainable. Photo by Appolinary Kalashnikova on Unsplash For millions of years us, humans, were part of Nature. We were born in the wild, lived in the wild, died in the wild. We ate what we found, drank the waters of rivers and streams, breathed air purified […]
Climate Change Has Come Full Circle
Climate Change Has Come Full Circle Photo by Mike Newbry on Unsplash Our modern technological civilization was born out of fossil fuels. Coal. Oil. Natural gas. To this very day most of our industry, transportation and agriculture is still powered by these incredibly dense, portable, storable sources of energy. There is a fly in the ointment though: the […]
Futurus Interruptus
Futurus Interruptus Most of the time, in writing these essays, I try to treat the decline of industrial society with the seriousness that it deserves. Sometimes, though, the plain raw absurdity of our current situation rises to a point that only raucous laughter can address. I ran into another of those points a few days […]
Nuclear Fusion: Eternal Energy = Eternal Damnation
Nuclear Fusion: Eternal Energy = Eternal Damnation Like a third rate zombie movie on Netflix, delusions of nuclear fusion repeatedly rise from the dead. The cover story in the June 2023 issue of Scientific American by Philip Ball, “Star Power: Does Fusion Have a Future After All?” recycles the corporate line which was broadcast on December 13, […]
Feedback Loops and Unsustainable Systems
Feedback Loops and Unsustainable Systems Mountains as seen from Tennessee Welcome Center I have brought up feedback loops (both positive and negative) many times in this space. I’ve also brought up unsustainable systems in one way or another in practically every article, since they are endemic in human society and at the root of every predicament. It would be very simple […]
Stable Electricity: A Long Slow Goodbye
Stable Electricity: A Long Slow Goodbye Photo by Dan Meyers on Unsplash Electricity shortages are looming for the UK and Europe, and then later for the rest of the overdeveloped world as well. Blackouts will become common, and you will get power only for a couple of hours a day — just like in countries with a less favorable economic […]
Is There an Off-Ramp for Civilization?
Is There an Off-Ramp for Civilization? Our high-tech civilization is like an ageing man in full denial of his mortality. It is eating his children just to live a day longer, rather than admitting that its craving for immortality is founded on nothing more than magical thinking. In its firm belief that technology can save […]
How the modern fantasy of an eternal civilization warps our view of technology
How the modern fantasy of an eternal civilization warps our view of technology What historians call the Golden Age of Greece—which ran from about 500 to 300 BC—spawned the foundational Western philosophers Plato and Aristotle; mathematicians such as Euclid whose geometry is still taught in schools today; classical Greek dramatists such as Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, […]
Conditioned To Believe
Conditioned To Believe In a High-Tech Future We Trust Photo by John Fowler on Unsplash Many of us believe firmly in a Star Trek world to come, where technology and science would eventually have an answer to every problem we face today: from cancer to infinite growth on a finite planet. (Not that these are two different things […]
