{"id":62607,"date":"2022-05-09T18:36:23","date_gmt":"2022-05-09T23:36:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=62607"},"modified":"2022-05-09T18:36:23","modified_gmt":"2022-05-09T23:36:23","slug":"the-age-of-dissonance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=62607","title":{"rendered":"The age of dissonance"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside id=\"slide-out\">\n<div class=\"search-mobile\"><\/div>\n<\/aside>\n<div id=\"wrapper\" class=\"boxed\">\n<div class=\"inner-wrapper\">\n<div id=\"main-content\" class=\"container\">\n<div class=\"post-cover-head\">\n<div class=\"single-post-thumb single-has-thumb\">\n<div class=\"post-cover-title\">\n<h3 class=\"name post-title entry-title\"><a href=\"https:\/\/consciousnessofsheep.co.uk\/2022\/05\/08\/the-age-of-dissonance\/?fbclid=IwAR2gMyRFHvgJfX6l8QIzcXfhp3ehTcMm3ZsaDNYxLMVnKmGRf7iMlHAC_W4\">The age of dissonance<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"content post-cover\">\n<article id=\"the-post\" class=\"post-listing post-7445 post type-post status-publish format-standard has-post-thumbnail  category-economy\">\n<div class=\"post-inner\">\n<div class=\"entry\">\n<p>As the surplus energy available to the economy declines, so the number of things that we can do in theory but can no longer do in practice will grow.\u00a0 This is the inverse of the technological efficiencies won in the course of three centuries of industrialisation \u2013 the peak of which occurred at some point in the last quarter of the twentieth century.<\/p>\n<p>The\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/consciousnessofsheep.co.uk\/2017\/10\/16\/the-difference-between-can-and-can\/\">two obvious apex technologies<\/a>\u00a0were the Anglo-French\u00a0<em>Concorde<\/em>\u00a0\u2013 the only supersonic passenger aircraft to operate\u00a0<em>commercially<\/em>\u00a0\u2013 and the USA\u2019s Saturn Five rocket and associated technologies which propelled three men at a time to the Moon and back.\u00a0 We didn\u2019t forget how to do those things, and theoretically we could repeat them given enough time and resources.\u00a0 But energetically, they are now beyond us \u2013 the energy cost of doing them is far greater than any benefits they might offer in return.\u00a0 The humble automated car wash turns out to be a more mundane technology that is\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/consciousnessofsheep.co.uk\/2019\/04\/09\/an-unlikely-simplification\/\">disappearing<\/a>\u00a0in the rear-view mirror.\u00a0 It is simply cheaper to pay someone to hose down a car, or cash-strapped car owners can do it themselves.\u00a0 And following peak oil in November 2018, and with the ensuing energy crisis \u2013 exacerbated by lockdowns and\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/consciousnessofsheep.co.uk\/2022\/03\/01\/economic-warfare-is-not-a-game-for-children\/\">economic warfare<\/a>\u00a0\u2013 gathering pace, we can expect many more of our supposed technological feats to turn into stranded assets.<\/p>\n<p>Another technology \u2013 in the broadest sense of the word \u2013 that looks set to go the way of the dodo is the once ubiquitous shopping high street.\u00a0 The once prestigious department stores were\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/consciousnessofsheep.co.uk\/2019\/01\/10\/a-brief-moment-of-clarity\/\">already in freefall<\/a>\u00a0before SARs-CoV-2 began its world tour.\u00a0 But two years of lockdowns have devastated retail businesses of all kinds, leaving shuttered-up shopfronts along every high street in the country, with the Welsh city of Newport claiming the record for having a third of its former shops empty.<\/p>\n<p>\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The age of dissonance As the surplus energy available to the economy declines, so the number of things that we can do in theory but can no longer do in practice will grow.\u00a0 This is the inverse of the technological efficiencies won in the course of three centuries of industrialisation \u2013 the peak of which [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,3],"tags":[31147,2900,31297,31360],"class_list":["post-62607","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-energy-2","tag-consciousness-of-sheep","tag-industrialisation","tag-surplus-energy","tag-tim-watkins"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62607","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=62607"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62607\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":62608,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62607\/revisions\/62608"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=62607"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=62607"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=62607"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}