Thanks for the shoutout. While ecotechnic future doesn't specifically discuss evolutionary pressures, it does provide a model to understand technological progression in the face of resource shortages. A mid-term: several thousand year angle. I think you'd find the book very enlightening.
I have no idea at this time. That would make a good topic for discussion. The problem is that the development of a human "Climax Ecology" will only take a few thousands of years. Not long enough for evolutionary pressures to be significant. If we knew what such a 'climax ecology' would look like, we could make predictions. At the current time though, I have no idea what such a civilization would be.
I've already told Bassoe about The Endpoint, an artwork by Vanga-Vagog https://www.deviantart.com/vanga-vangog/art/The-Endpoint-903986894 which is the most fleshed-out example of (what it seems from the summary I read) Ecotechnic future is about. I have to say I don't buy Greer's premise. I don't think there will ever be a peak resource crisis. Was there a peak firewood crisis? A peak wale-oil crisis? As we deplete one resource, we'll invent ways to extract energy more efficiently from other sources.
I have now read the Endpoint artwork. I disagree, but for complex reasons. I do think that a climax community will appear in our future, but I doubt it'll be eusocial. The primary reason being that, like most good science fiction, the work rests entirely on a single clark-tech technology (ie magic). In this case it's nanotech fabrication. A common trope, but one that starts to become an issue in the real world. Nanotech fabrication allows supply-chains that are incredibly short even for advanced technologies.
Without some equivalent of nanotech fabrication, long supply chains are required for advanced human technology. Supply chains that break down without mass transit. In essence, it's not possible to maintain high technology after a major collapse. Demographic in this case, and critical technologies will be lost. That is the major stumbling block... that and a power source. Factories can't run without a major power source. I suspect our climax communities will look more agrarian. Have you seen any of those 'solar punk' videos? something more like that.
I thought the fabrication was biotech, but I won't quibble over that point. I will, though, push back on your use of the word "magic," which seems dismissive, as if such things a self-growing city was ispo facto impossible. You're correct of course that in order to maintain our standard of living with current technology, we need long supply chains, but that's not a law of physics. We will develop new technologies which will change the incentives and capabilities of our economies.
It's not the self-growing city that's the problem. It's the self-growing circuit boards. There are very few people familiar enough with mining/resource-processing to understand the issue. Our most efficient resource extraction processes require the richest deposits on earth. (Something like 100ppm or better) before they're effective.
You can't get the rare earth elements needed for diodes and capacitors and transistors anywhere. They're available in maybe a dozen mineable deposits on the planet. Historically "get metal" was something a small village could purify through rudimentary smelting. High Technology requires gigantic supply chains:
Get the ore -> concentrate the ore -> smelt the concentrate -> electro plate the smelted material...
At least 3 different major metallurgy facilities are required to purify a single rare earth element. As you can imagine there's not many of those facilities. on earth. Say 3 to 5 companies each with 1 or 2 facilities. So to make an integrated circuit, you're talking a gigantic global supply chain with energy-expenditure to match. It's only profitable because there's also a global market. If these production facilities were smaller and local, they couldn't operate. It would be too energy intensive even if they happened to be right on top of a rich ore vein. Additionally, without global trade networks you could maybe get Lanthanum but not Dysprosium in a purified form. High technology (the type required to build computers that can produce clones or the type required to produce integrated circuits) cannot exist without this massive globally integrated trade system.
Effectively: the tech we take for granted today cannot exist without global supply chains. If the global supply chain were to shrink (or collapse) all of our advanced technology would cease to be produced and a bit over half of our 100-year-old technology would also stop production. Ore resources are getting sparser, and what was easy to purify 100 years ago might require the global supply chain to purify today:
Example being that without coke you can't make steel. Coke used to be a lot easier to get than it is today. Without a chemical company giving you a high-purity supply you have to rely on local production. Lowered purity means reduced quality steel. This means that your oven needs to get heavier to allow for metal imperfections.
I appreciate the optimism, but we're subject to systems-collapse at a global scale at this point. There's a dozen mines on earth that keep the modern world running. If just one of them closes or stops producing the whole of high technology triples in price overnight. The books "Breaking Together" and "Ecotechnic future" discuss systems collapse in a more detailed way and I'll be publishing an article on the subject soon. There are absolutely cases where 1 advanced technology can improve efficiency or replace a previously resource-intense use. That will not solve the problem, however. High technology in the general sense cannot exist without the advanced global supply-chains that have grown up along side it. Anything you pick up in your home has requirements that cannot simply be supplemented with something else.
Even something as simple as modern paper can't be replicated without complex organic chemicals produced by only 2 or 3 suppliers on earth. We can go back 150 years in terms of tech and standard of living, but we can't go back 50 or even 20.
We need a massive new energy source if we're going to keep expanding our society. We're woefully short of critical minerals right now and haven't found may more that are energy-efficient to extract. "EROI" as stated in "Ecotechnic Future" is becoming a serious problem.
I think the concept of EROI is a very useful one. The best graph I found after a few minutes of looking (https://www.perplexity.ai/search/energy-return-on-investment-fo-1fahIzqPTL6wQOplyp5A3g) shows that EROI for petroleum was stable from 1970 to 2010, but I don't know about the last 15 years. Anyway, I could bring up solar, fusion, and fracking, but these specific technologies distract from my point that we don't know what we don't know. In the 1920s, nobody imagined the possibility of fusion. In the 1820s, the photovoltaic effect hadn't be observed. I think it's arrogant to think we know every industrial energy source in the 2020s. Maybe our descendants will run their cities off of virtual particles.
While it's reasonable to assume there will be future developments, basing that assumption on pass developments is flawed. My sciences article goes into detail on the issues in the sciences... it's not only petroleum that we're having a problem with.
An excellent example of this problem can be described this way:
Tech Bro: "Our new solar panels are 90% efficient. If we cover 15% of the central valley with them, we can power the entire state of California."
Miner: "That's amazing, how much copper and rubidium would that take?"
Tech bro: "what?"
Miner: "your solar panels use a lot of copper and rubidium, how much per square meter? What's the total amount of copper and rubidium required?"
A short bit of mathematics later and it turns out it would take 5x the total amount of copper ever mined in human history and 20x the estimated global rubidium reserves. New tech is great, improved efficiency is great, but there are hard limits a lot of people don't think about.
Thanks for the shoutout. While ecotechnic future doesn't specifically discuss evolutionary pressures, it does provide a model to understand technological progression in the face of resource shortages. A mid-term: several thousand year angle. I think you'd find the book very enlightening.
I admit I haven't read it yet, but Bassoe seemed to think it interesting, so now it's on my to-read pile.
>While ecotechnic future doesn't specifically discuss evolutionary pressures
I know. My point being, if you assume ecotechnic future's conclusions are accurate, what evolutionary pressures would they impose?
I have no idea at this time. That would make a good topic for discussion. The problem is that the development of a human "Climax Ecology" will only take a few thousands of years. Not long enough for evolutionary pressures to be significant. If we knew what such a 'climax ecology' would look like, we could make predictions. At the current time though, I have no idea what such a civilization would be.
I've already told Bassoe about The Endpoint, an artwork by Vanga-Vagog https://www.deviantart.com/vanga-vangog/art/The-Endpoint-903986894 which is the most fleshed-out example of (what it seems from the summary I read) Ecotechnic future is about. I have to say I don't buy Greer's premise. I don't think there will ever be a peak resource crisis. Was there a peak firewood crisis? A peak wale-oil crisis? As we deplete one resource, we'll invent ways to extract energy more efficiently from other sources.
I have now read the Endpoint artwork. I disagree, but for complex reasons. I do think that a climax community will appear in our future, but I doubt it'll be eusocial. The primary reason being that, like most good science fiction, the work rests entirely on a single clark-tech technology (ie magic). In this case it's nanotech fabrication. A common trope, but one that starts to become an issue in the real world. Nanotech fabrication allows supply-chains that are incredibly short even for advanced technologies.
Without some equivalent of nanotech fabrication, long supply chains are required for advanced human technology. Supply chains that break down without mass transit. In essence, it's not possible to maintain high technology after a major collapse. Demographic in this case, and critical technologies will be lost. That is the major stumbling block... that and a power source. Factories can't run without a major power source. I suspect our climax communities will look more agrarian. Have you seen any of those 'solar punk' videos? something more like that.
I thought the fabrication was biotech, but I won't quibble over that point. I will, though, push back on your use of the word "magic," which seems dismissive, as if such things a self-growing city was ispo facto impossible. You're correct of course that in order to maintain our standard of living with current technology, we need long supply chains, but that's not a law of physics. We will develop new technologies which will change the incentives and capabilities of our economies.
It's not the self-growing city that's the problem. It's the self-growing circuit boards. There are very few people familiar enough with mining/resource-processing to understand the issue. Our most efficient resource extraction processes require the richest deposits on earth. (Something like 100ppm or better) before they're effective.
You can't get the rare earth elements needed for diodes and capacitors and transistors anywhere. They're available in maybe a dozen mineable deposits on the planet. Historically "get metal" was something a small village could purify through rudimentary smelting. High Technology requires gigantic supply chains:
Get the ore -> concentrate the ore -> smelt the concentrate -> electro plate the smelted material...
At least 3 different major metallurgy facilities are required to purify a single rare earth element. As you can imagine there's not many of those facilities. on earth. Say 3 to 5 companies each with 1 or 2 facilities. So to make an integrated circuit, you're talking a gigantic global supply chain with energy-expenditure to match. It's only profitable because there's also a global market. If these production facilities were smaller and local, they couldn't operate. It would be too energy intensive even if they happened to be right on top of a rich ore vein. Additionally, without global trade networks you could maybe get Lanthanum but not Dysprosium in a purified form. High technology (the type required to build computers that can produce clones or the type required to produce integrated circuits) cannot exist without this massive globally integrated trade system.
Effectively: the tech we take for granted today cannot exist without global supply chains. If the global supply chain were to shrink (or collapse) all of our advanced technology would cease to be produced and a bit over half of our 100-year-old technology would also stop production. Ore resources are getting sparser, and what was easy to purify 100 years ago might require the global supply chain to purify today:
Example being that without coke you can't make steel. Coke used to be a lot easier to get than it is today. Without a chemical company giving you a high-purity supply you have to rely on local production. Lowered purity means reduced quality steel. This means that your oven needs to get heavier to allow for metal imperfections.
I appreciate the optimism, but we're subject to systems-collapse at a global scale at this point. There's a dozen mines on earth that keep the modern world running. If just one of them closes or stops producing the whole of high technology triples in price overnight. The books "Breaking Together" and "Ecotechnic future" discuss systems collapse in a more detailed way and I'll be publishing an article on the subject soon. There are absolutely cases where 1 advanced technology can improve efficiency or replace a previously resource-intense use. That will not solve the problem, however. High technology in the general sense cannot exist without the advanced global supply-chains that have grown up along side it. Anything you pick up in your home has requirements that cannot simply be supplemented with something else.
Even something as simple as modern paper can't be replicated without complex organic chemicals produced by only 2 or 3 suppliers on earth. We can go back 150 years in terms of tech and standard of living, but we can't go back 50 or even 20.
I'll take a look, thanks!
We need a massive new energy source if we're going to keep expanding our society. We're woefully short of critical minerals right now and haven't found may more that are energy-efficient to extract. "EROI" as stated in "Ecotechnic Future" is becoming a serious problem.
I think the concept of EROI is a very useful one. The best graph I found after a few minutes of looking (https://www.perplexity.ai/search/energy-return-on-investment-fo-1fahIzqPTL6wQOplyp5A3g) shows that EROI for petroleum was stable from 1970 to 2010, but I don't know about the last 15 years. Anyway, I could bring up solar, fusion, and fracking, but these specific technologies distract from my point that we don't know what we don't know. In the 1920s, nobody imagined the possibility of fusion. In the 1820s, the photovoltaic effect hadn't be observed. I think it's arrogant to think we know every industrial energy source in the 2020s. Maybe our descendants will run their cities off of virtual particles.
While it's reasonable to assume there will be future developments, basing that assumption on pass developments is flawed. My sciences article goes into detail on the issues in the sciences... it's not only petroleum that we're having a problem with.
An excellent example of this problem can be described this way:
Tech Bro: "Our new solar panels are 90% efficient. If we cover 15% of the central valley with them, we can power the entire state of California."
Miner: "That's amazing, how much copper and rubidium would that take?"
Tech bro: "what?"
Miner: "your solar panels use a lot of copper and rubidium, how much per square meter? What's the total amount of copper and rubidium required?"
A short bit of mathematics later and it turns out it would take 5x the total amount of copper ever mined in human history and 20x the estimated global rubidium reserves. New tech is great, improved efficiency is great, but there are hard limits a lot of people don't think about.