[SeaGypsy]

Walking away from all this bullshit grows in appeal as it progresses.

[Newfie]

Yup. I'm no Luddite but I've this stupid idea the damn things are here to support us, not visa versa. Windows 10 should be declared unconstitutional as a violation of privacy.

My 30 year old Volvo diesel runs sans electricity let alone the internet. But now it's hard to buy a diesel without a chip. It's one thing when you are in the USA and have AAA everywhere. It's something else when you have no cell phone coverage let alone Fed Ex.

[onlooker]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Newfie', 'Y')up. I'm no Luddite but I've this stupid idea the damn things are here to support us, not visa versa. Windows 10 should be declared unconstitutional as a violation of privacy.

[SeaGypsy]

Where I'm at now in response in the real world is: (@ 50 yo ie now)

Asap be not more than 6 months a year at 'work'.

Make as much as possible, with minimal threats of death or incarceration, in those 6 months, also minimum head f#k.

Aim squarely at the best paid jobs in any of my areas.

To these ends, I'm upgrading the next step up in my truck license. I have 5 years clean now, in 2 years I'm driving the longest & heaviest road vehicles on earth, (google NT road trains), on country i grew up on, makng $500+ a day.

Then I'm going travelling, not to do happy snaps, to look for my exit & invest half my life in it until there is no necessity to my return, then all of it.

Why Newfie & Ibon are my po heros, not just for their legendary wit & prose, but for setting up a vision totally outside the square of expectation, doing what it took/ takes to make it happen.

[DesuMaiden]

Computerizing everything (or the attempt in doing so) is pretty much the last vain attempt humans try to pull out of a hat to "solve" the problems caused by previous technofixes such as automobiles, totalitarian agriculture and capitalism. It will fail miserably because computers will one day become obsolete when there are:

a) No more precious metals and minerals left to mine in order to make the components of computers and other electronic products

b) No more stable electric grid to provide the energy to power these computers and everything else industrial civilization runs on.

c) The globalized supply chain necessary to make computers breaks down. Currently, almost all of the world's computer's are manufactured in a handful of locations and factories in China. However, computers rely on at least 60 minerals and elements on the periodic table that must be imported across dozens of countries such as China, The Congo Republic, Canada and Australia. Due to peak oil and the subsequent catastrophic gap between demand being larger than supply of petroleum, manufacturing computers becomes impossible sometime in the future (probably by the mid portion of the 21st century , around 2030 to 2040) because without sufficient quantities of petroleum, you can't:

1) mine and refine the raw materials (metallic ores and minerals) necessary to make computers.

2) Assembling computers in factories must use electricity that must come from fossil fuels. In this case, coal for the computer-manufacturing factories in China. No petroleum = no electricity = computer-assembly factories can no longer operate (then again, almost no factory can operate without fossil-fuel-generated electricity).

3) Transport the finished computers via the trucks and cargo ships that run on petroleum from their point of manufacture (which is almost exclusively China) to the rest of the world.

Points 2) and 3) are even redundant because without sufficient supplies of petroleum, you can't even extract the raw materials necessary for manufacturing computers let alone manufacture and transport the finished goods around the world.

d) Once the existing computers die of old age and no more new computers can be manufactured in the future, all information stored in computers (or other computerized systems such the Internet and the cloud-based storage systems) will no longer be accessible. And considering that most of the most important artifacts (i.e. scientific knowledge, cultural achievements) of industrial civilization are now stored on computers, no more computers= lost of most of the knowledge and culture acculumated by humanity over all of recorded history.

What I'm telling you guys is sad, but true. Our civilization is ephermal like every other civilization that existed before it, and eventually the wind and rain will erode away all records and memories of it.

[onlooker]

Great post Desu. Highlighting the Achilles heel of our current civilization
Being: The provision of cheap abundant energy

[KaiserJeep]

I get the impression that everybody thinks of computers as the bulky tower cases and CRT monitors of old. CRTs were 1950s vacuum tube tech, and the tower computers frequently had 150 watt power supplies and multiple fans blowing hot air.

The smart phone is today's typical computer, and a handheld tablet is the equivalent of the power mainframe of yesterday. I still have one of the old tower machines, and it is 10+ years old - an eternity in the world of electronics. I was fortunate enough to have a combination of hardware that supported Windows 7, or it too would have been retired. It's three predecessor PCs were retired, each without experiencing a failure any more serious than a noisy fan - even the hard drives seem to last forever. If your experience was worse than mine, you bought poor quality hardware.

The thing is, that my E-reader has more computing power than that old tower PC, as do most smart phones. Those ubiquitous mobile devices are the modern PC/Apple equivalents, and far from being obsolete or on the wane, they are penetrating Third World countries and Internet-connecting the poorest people on the planet. That's a good thing, by the way, because otherwise the only amusement they would have is activities that increase the birth rate.

Nor are excessive amounts of power required. In the Third World, the Internet is cell towers and wireless devices, and both the network infrastructure and the mobile devices use solar power.

I just realized that even my E-reader is 5+ years old. I am fond of it because it has 1920X1280 resolution in a 9" color screen, and I can spend odd hours in the day getting caught up on the video backlog in my TiVo, in full HD. Likewise it can connect via HDMI and display on my 27" monitor or my 55" HDTV.

Even under-$50 disposable appliances have microprocessor controls, and experimenters have access to under-$50 "Raspberry PI" general purpose computers, which in the opinion of this computer professional, supply a superb introduction to digital electronics and software.

If you think this stuff is resource-intensive or dependant upon excessive embedded energies, you are wrong. Most of it is made from petroleum feedstocks, the viscuous remnant after all the lighter hydrocarbons are removed for fuel. The bulk of the remainder uses common metals and silica sand as raw materials. There are minute traces of rare earths and exotic metals inside, but (since China is the source for most of these materials) we long ago built up a strategic reserve of these materials, intended to last 10+ years. Then technology moved forward and the 10+ year supply became 100+ year supply, because modern digital electronics use much less raw materials. We now understand that there are enough raw electronic materials to manufacture 100+ computers for every person on Earth when the population blows through 10 Billion people.

Like it or not, understand it or not, computers are here to stay. The world would today be on the downslope from "peak humans" if it were not for the very real and incredible productivity enabled by digital electronic devices.

If you think differently, you are an old fogey and obsolete. I AM an old fogey but I am also a computer professional and I'm telling you that electronics is creeping into everything including the people themselves.

[onlooker]

Kaiser and what of the rare Earth minerals needed in the production process?
Attaining and transporting them is not energy intensive?

[onlooker]

Kaiser or Pstarr can you explain what this "new" Internet/peer to peer network is? Just curious

[KaiserJeep]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('onlooker', 'K')aiser and what of the rare Earth minerals needed in the production process?
Attaining and transporting them is not energy intensive?

[onlooker]

Fascinating P, thanks. So yes, I get it, I think. Every cellphone, computer will function as a stand alone system without needing to interface with any other devise. It would all be pre-programmed. As Kaiser, said the cellphones already have so much computing power and storage that this is quite feasible for all smartphones and computers. Makes me think that it just could be that the elites power holders have not wanted this to come about. For them De-centralized would be losing control and proprietary rights, not to mentioned ease of monitoring spying.
Yes, losing money of course should be highlighted as to why this idea does not appeal to the ruling structure.

[KaiserJeep]

Let me add that I DO NOT believe in peer-to-peer networking. Every existing device is set up for the network architecture we have. Peer-to-peer might be made to work in those stinky rat warrens we call "cities", but even there, you would have to get everybody to disconnect, load a new networking software layer, and reconnect. It will never happen IMHO, it is one of those tech pipedreams.

You just have NO IDEA of the amount of data flowing through the network backbones today, or how crowded the cellphone network is. The mobile devices don't have the horsepower today.

[Newfie]

Borg.

Will it work in Hiva Oa? Better yet, half way there?

And NO, I will NOT be assimilated!