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Tag Archives: future
We are at Peak Oil now; we need very low-cost energy to fix it
We are at Peak Oil now; we need very low-cost energy to fix it This past week, I gave a presentation to a group interested in a particular type of renewable energy–solar energy that is deployed in space, so it would provide electricity 24 hours per day. Their question was: how low does the production cost […]
Retrotopia: A Gift to be Simple
Retrotopia: A Gift to be Simple This is the eleventh installment of an exploration of some of the possible futures discussed on this blog, using the toolkit of narrative fiction. Our narrator ventures out of Toledo into a tier one rural county and sees one of the alternative cultures taking shape in the Lakeland Republic. […]
The Trouble with the Future
The Trouble with the Future Feeeeeelings PARIS – Yesterday, we got so much mail on our recent issue on Donald Trump we couldn’t read it all. Pro… con… off the wall – readers’ sentiments were all over the place. But a clever reader mercifully brought the discussion to an end with this quote from fellow Baltimorean H.L. Mencken: “As […]
David Holmgren Interview on Permaculture, Energy Descent & Future Scenarios
DAVID HOLMGREN INTERVIEW ON PERMACULTURE, ENERGY DESCENT & FUTURE SCENARIOS An interview with David Holmgren, questions by Samuel Alexander, a lecturer with the Office for Environmental Programs and research fellow at the Melbourne Sustainable Society Institute (MSSI), University of Melbourne. He also co-directs the Simplicity Institute. This is the full length interview from the upcoming documentary […]
The Flutter of Space Bat Wings
The Flutter of Space Bat Wings You don’t actually know a time or a culture until you discover the thoughts that its people can’t allow themselves to think. I had a reminder of that the other day, by way of my novel Star’s Reach. I’m pleased to say that for a novel that violates pretty much […]
Shrinking the Technosphere, Part VII
Shrinking the Technosphere, Part VII You have survived your first winter on the land. Congratulations! The worst part of the ordeal is quite possibly over. Gone are whatever addictions and expectations with which you arrived, be they internet access or coffee. Your new world consists of the few people around you, and a huge number […]
Can We Afford the Future?
Can We Afford the Future? Broken road image via shutterstock. Reproduced at Resilience.org with permission. As a child of the 1950s I grew up immersed in a near-universal expectation of progress. Everybody expected a shiny new future; the only thing that might have prevented us from having it was nuclear war, and thankfully that hasn’t happened […]
The Heresy of Technological Choice
The Heresy of Technological Choice Among the interesting benefits of writing a blog like this, focusing as it does on the end of industrial civilization, are the opportunities it routinely affords for a glimpse at the stranger side of the collective thinking of our time. The last few weeks have been an unusually good source […]
What Money Means
What Money Means It’s important, but it’s not everything There’s no doubt that money is important. There’s good reason why most of us devote a huge percentage of our lives to pursuing it. But there’s much about money that is misunderstood. Many among the masses don’t realize the intense and coordinated efforts currently being waged […]
Retrotopia: A Visit to the Capitol
Retrotopia: A Visit to the Capitol This is the ninth installment of an exploration of some of the possible futures discussed on this blog, using the toolkit of narrative fiction. Our narrator finally has his interview with the President of the Lakeland Republic, asks some hard questions, and prepares for a trip into unexpected territory. […]
Retrotopia: A Question of Subsidies
Retrotopia: A Question of Subsidies This is the seventh installment of an exploration of some of the possible futures discussed on this blog, using the toolkit of narrative fiction. Our narrator visits a streetcar factory, asks some hard questions about the use of human labor in place of machines, and gets some answers he doesn’t […]
Retrotopia: The Scent of Ink on Paper
Retrotopia: The Scent of Ink on Paper This is the sixth installment of an exploration of some of the possible futures discussed on this blog, using the toolkit of narrative fiction. Our narrator, roaming the streets of the capitol of the Lakeland Republic, visits a newsstand and a public library, and discovers that information and […]
A Landscape of Dreams
A Landscape of Dreams Maybe it’s just the psychology of selective attention, but tolerably often when I want to go into more detail about a point made in a previous essay here, stories relevant to that point in one way or another start popping up on the news. That’s been true even during this blog’s […]
An Unprecedented Future
An Unprecedented Future I can see The Age of Consequences from my home. We live on a former ranch near Santa Fe, New Mexico, that is now a subdivision with more than two thousand houses. Due to its proximity to a center of colonial Spanish, Mexican, and American administrations, as well as the Santa Fe Trail, the […]
