[xerces]

First of all, I want to give a little bit of background about myself. I'm a consultant and I travel around the country all the time.

I understand the impact of PO, and I do believe that even with coal liquification, PO will still become a major problem 30-40 years down the line.

Amid the predictions of social collapse and anarchy during PO, I would like to add a few cautious points for optimism.

I currently fly between 2 major cities at least once a week. And if one were to do some quick calculations on the energy spent on such a trip, one can see that one single round trip on a jet equates to roughly the total amount of energy needed to keep a hunter-gatherer alive throughout his natural lifespan.

Now sometimes, I work from home or somewhere other than my office. And during those times, I would remote-term into my computer via the internet and work as usual. In fact I do not seem to have encountered any significant decrease in efficiency when working remotely. Nowadays internet-based communications tools have evolved to the point where a large percentage of the workforce of a service economy can do their job anywhere provided that they have an internet connection.

And this is one of the reasons why large corporations are scaling back office buildings and centers. There are no longer as much incentive to PHYSICALLY concentrate employees to do their work.

Now how does that have anything to do with PO? Well, it seems to me that, working from home in front of a computer takes roughly 1/1,000,000th the energy it takes for me to physically fly half-way across the country to work. And I suffer no real decrease in work efficiency.

And think of this, a single tank of gas contains enough energy to keep a computer running(and allow the person to work virtually ) for several monthes, while that tank of gas, if used to physically transport the person to work, will last no more than several days.

Additionally, the internet has allowed me to manage some of my physical assets (some of which is on another continent) without ever having to go there. Everything from banking,to shopping for goods, to doing taxes are now done from the internet. A person really doesn't have to leave home to do much of what he needs to do, even groceries can be ordered from online now.

Another point of note is the rapid evolution of teleprescence and mmorpg technologies. Anyone who has played modern mmorpgs like everquest II or worlds of warcraft, will probably understand the level of detail and social interaction that these games have acheived. Millions of people inhabiting hundreds of exquistely detailed virtual worlds. Anyone who has seen Google Earth knows about the detailed 3D renderings of all major U.S cities that one can navigate through virtually.

The future of this communications network is capable(imho) of encompassing our entire service-oriented economy and offering a viable solution to PO.

An alternative future: 2030 ad

Cyber world: The entire U.S/most of earth is digitized on the internet, all net inhabiting members exists on this "virtual" earth. This virtual earth supports billions of members, a significant fraction of humanity. People can teleport to any point on virtual earth at the speed of light. Most service-based work is done on-line. People go to work in this virtual approximation of the real world(virtual office, virtual malls, virtual shopping centers in a virtual city/town/nation). Almost all services can be conducted online. The Internet is a world of dazzling technology, splendid architecture, ultra-cheap virtual goods(software/information), instantaneous travel, and the center of the global economy. Families will have huge and high-tech virtual houses, and can take virtual vacations to distant virtual lands at very low cost.

Real world: Long distance travel is expensive to the point where perhaps only the top 1% of the population can afford plane tickets. Auto-travel is so expensive that no more than 5% of the population can afford it. For most people travel is confined to rare long-distance trips on trains or more common short distance trips on muscle powered vehicles (bicycles, animal-pulled vehicles). Houses will be much smaller to save energy on heating costs. The average amount of land per family will be larger due to a much larger percentage of the population reverting back to producing some of their own food(gardens, small farms). Both food-production and Power-generation will be somewhat more decentralized. Homes will have more solar-panels, windmills, bio-diesel generators...etc. The urban population will increase, because closer distance to production and distribution centers will allow for the cheaper price of manufactured goods.

Unlike the present, in this world the cost of a manufactured product from far away will be far more expensive than the cost of obtaining information. So a bottle of real fine wine from France could potentially cost way more than say the entire libary of congress downloaded to one's computer.


Conclusion: This alternate future is possible. Though it is strange that old and new technologies can co-exist in such a fashion. Still, this approach allows us to keep our high-tech civilization while still maintaining an energy balance.

[Colorado-Valley]

The Shire with laptops?

It's an interesting vision, and very utopian. Is there a huge depopulation scenario in your vision? If not, how do you feed and provide water for 9 billion people?

How do you make our world's depleted topsoil produce food without fossil fuel fertilizers and pesticides? I'm afraid food will be the cliff that nobody is prepared to deal with.

I just can't figure it out, and it wrecks all the utopian scenarios. Believe me, I've thought a lot about this, and I own a farm.

[xerces]

The food problem can be easily solved with coal based fertilizers and rail-based transportation. Additionally, changes in diets(less red meat, more seafood/tofu) will multiple our total food supply many times again. And it's far cheaper to transport bulk grains than it is people.

The beauty of this system is that energy-expensive physical transportation of people is reduced to almost zero. All that extra energy is freed for the exclusive use of food-production, manufacturing, and communications.

[cynthia]

Tele-commuting via oil based technology, requires clean(soon-to-be-scarce) water to produce the parts to maintain...
Please rference the deep research that justifies how this is going to work. You will then have the formula to save the world from oil depletion and hunger.
Regards,
Cynthia

[Battle_Scarred_Galactico]

Nice idea but not very thought out.

What about all the jobs that automobiles/planes provide, and what's linked to them.

A world were everyone just chats shit over the net (and not just on PO.com) doesn't really provide anything.

[Googolplex]

Geez guys, most of that has nothing to do with his post at all!

Cynthia had a valid counter-point about chip production, but what does food production and lost jobs have to do with it? The internet is still a potentially MASSIVE energy saver in many, many ways. Fact is, we will be FORCED into the situation Xerces describes, simply because we won't be able to afford anything else, especially if energy supplies are so scarce as to cause a dieoff due to lost food production.

Also, I don't see how its particularly utopian, or at least any more so then our current society.

[rogerhb]

This reminds me of The Busby Report.

[Wildwell]

On its own increased telecommunications do not constrain travel demand or demand for goods. In the early 1970s, many households in Britain (and other large parts of the west) had no telephone. The internet was not in widespread use until the late 1990s. Since this time the demand for travel has increased exponentially as people come into contact with others and have experiences they would not have had. We are social animals, whatever anyone likes to say.

Most people are not self disciplined enough to work at home, so with cheap energy it’s highly unlikely this will reverse.

It’s highly unlikely cables can so easily be maintained in an era of expensive energy.

More telecommunications produce more work, not less. Look how much work has been created by email. Very few people are now ‘out of contact’. The result of this has been a rise in ‘unnecessary’ communications which has weighed individuals and companies down, reducing productively. The retraining needing to keep on top of this technological advance has created even more work and produced a ‘technological underclass’, usually middle aged woman.

Technology is a strange thing - it often creates the opposite effect that’s intended!

I think technology/telecommunications has a part to play for sure. But I don’t see this ‘no work’, ‘work from home’ utopia geeks have been predicting since the 1960s.

Technology is also hugely unreliable - The more complexity the more problems/failures that are created.

The internet is one of the biggest crime holes there is.

I can see ordering goods over the internet getting bigger, a bit of a play thing, but not a whole society based on it. For example we don't actually need stores and cars to visit stores. Goods could be delivered to a central rail served depot and distributed to households via electric vans etc.

[backstop]

I'd agree with Kochevnic -

"There are lots of things that could be done - there is almost nothing that will be done."

Xerces assumption of "the shire with laptops" gives no hint of the road between here and there - apart from the ( presumably unprecedented rate of) development of liquid fuels and fertilizers from coal. Given that we're already having difficulty maintaining coal supply even to meet extant electricity demand, this begs some questions.

First, in the '90s, one of the UN's Human Development reports spoke of how 70% of the world's population have yet to make a phone call. So at what point does everyone get a laptop ?

Second, maybe most here will remember the promises of the paperless office ? Paper consumption has instead risen due to the ease of desk-wallahs' control of printing.

Third, with the west having now lost not only its basic production trades but also the centralized manufacturing capacity that destroyed them, given the escalating cost of foreign goods' embedded energy and of the energy used to transport them, with what would we pay for those goods even if everyone had a laptop ?

Perhaps Noel Coward Had it right in when he said :

"I did see a service economy once, it was on a South Sea island, where the natives earned a precarious living taking in eachother's washing . . . "

regards,

Backstop

[xerces]

"The entire system is setup on the premise of massive centralization.
What you are proposing will be fought tooth and nail by every manager-type pencil pusher on earth. This is a cultrue change on par with changing Osama Bin Forgotten into a Southern Baptist. Consider also that this idea also has extreme merit RIGHT NOW ... geeks have been discussing this for years as a panacea for lots of problems. And in how many situations has it been adopted ? Very, very few."


Call me a cautious optimist but it seems to me that these trends are not only happening, but they are driven entirely by market forces. All the remote terminal and vpn technologies are being voluntarily adopted by almost all major corporations. As we speak there are something like 10 million people in the U.S who's working full time jobs remotely from home. Another 30-40 million who frequently work from home through the internet. That means that somelike 15-20% of the total U.S population has worked at home remotely at some point.

This transformation wasn't driven by a centralized directive, it's entirely MARKET driven. Companies wants to cut cost and improve efficiency(and get more out of their employees).

Another one of these market-driven phenomenon seems to be online grocery stores. There's a reason why these stores are expanding so quickly. Because they don't need to maintain stores and the fact that they have pre-planned routes of delivery, their prices are cheaper. Thus people are buying more groceries from the online stores than normal stores. In fact, if one looks at it, the entire U.S internet is a market-driven system. And it's effectively 15% of our entire economy at this point.


Now another reason why I think the cyber economy may become possible is the time scale of PO. Energy prices will gradually become more and more expensive over the course of decades and generations. We're unlikely to suddenly run out of oil tomrrow or even 10 years from now. Instead, this gradual decline in petrol supply will slowly drive up transport costs, thus giving companies the incentive and the time to expand their remote workforce.


And moreover, an cyber economy can in fact function with as much complexity as a normal economy but only on a tiny fraction of energy.

[Ludi]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('xerces', '"') Energy prices will gradually become more and more expensive over the course of decades and generations. We're unlikely to suddenly run out of oil tomrrow or even 10 years from now. Instead, this gradual decline in petrol supply will slowly drive up transport costs, thus giving companies the incentive and the time to expand their remote workforce.

[xerces]

"The Shire with laptops?

It's an interesting vision, and very utopian. Is there a huge depopulation scenario in your vision? If not, how do you feed and provide water for 9 billion people?"

I see nothing particularly Utopian about this future. It seems that people would be just as stressed, and perhaps more so what with instantaneous virtual travel and communications.

Now as for food and water, lets assume that the population of the U.S doubles in 30 years to over 500 million people. Consider that as population pressure rises and as fertilizer costs rises over time, the price of meat will rise accordingly. Thus eventually red meat production will become costly to the point of becoming a delicacy market(majority of the population cannot regularly afford it). Look at countries like China or Japan, the people there are not starving, but they eat very little red meat. Is it because they are more ecologically aware? No, it's because red meat is too expensive to produce. Once the production of cattle and pigs fall into the niche market category due to high prices, most of the grains produced by this country will be directly consumed by it's people. This will automatically increase our total food supply by around 5 times (5 lbs of grain => 1 lb of pork/beef).

Now as for protein, soy products and seafood are far more efficient ways of acquring it. And looking at the growth in soy products and aquaculture over the last 5 years, I would bet that these 2 sources will supply most of our country's protein within 30 years.

[xerces]

"I don't assume the "gradually" as easily as you do, giving us "decades and generations." You know peak oil isn't about "running out of oil" so why even use that phrase?"



Keep in mind that as petrol supply decreases, we'll see natural increases in a combination of wind/solar , coal, nuclear power production due to market demand. Now I agree that total increase will not offset the decrease in petrol supply, but I think it unlikely for us to see a rapid decline within a span of a few years time. Decades yes, years no.



"BTW I work at home, but not "cyber," I actually make physical objects. I'm not clear on how the economy will run without people actually making and doing things...."

My personal opinion is that as the cost of long distance transport increases, the incentive for building manufacturing centers near the market will increase. So it's possible that light industries of some form will crop up again near the urban centers. And these centers of manufacture will supply the rural/sub-urban population around them instead of importing manufactured goods from the other side of the planet. But keep in mind that while physical goods will probably have to be manufactured closer to home. Services could be given from the otherside of the planet at a much cheaper cost.

[Ludi]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('xerces', ' ')I think it unlikely for us to see a rapid decline within a span of a few years time. Decades yes, years no.

[xerces]

Well, we have other examples of major population declines due to resource depletions to refer to.

Easter Island, Norse Greenland, and the Mayan Cities all declined due to outstripping their resources. But if one looks at their fall, it's always gradual, spread out over decades or centuries.

[Pops]

From my perspective the Cyber Shire isn’t so far-fetched – I’m doing it now. While my particular specialty of advertising and graphic design may or may not last into the distant (50+ years) future; for the present and foreseeable future I find working long distance to be quite satisfactory if I’m able to continue communication.

Even if we were past peak today there is a huge monetary, societal and technological momentum driving us forward – I imagine, don’t you, that the Titanic continued forward for a time after impact? I don’t foresee that momentum simply providing a replacement of our current arrangement with an identical one albeit fueled differently, I imagine that momentum becoming focused on better ways to distribute production of all types.

15 years ago I had the idea that the internet would replace mass-production with mass-specialization, i.e.: the guy in Idaho making cedar clogs probably couldn’t find a large enough market locally to survive. However, given access to virtually a worldwide market via the internet he might easily make a living. Of course overnight transport of goods made at home (as opposed to homemade) may eventually become prohibitively expensive for all but the wealthiest - but then again the Henry Ford of the Cyber Shire era hasn’t really had much reason to come into being as yet either.

Toyota’s invention and Sam Walton’s perfection of just in time delivery made his family the richest in the world. Before the 1950s & ‘60s no one would have thought of having all the parts for the day’s production or all the stock for the day’s sales delivered the day before – inventory tracking, communication, raw goods production and transportation were all too inflexible and slow. But the high cost of warehouse space and relatively low cost of transport caused Toyota to rethink the whole system and the world followed. But Sam’s rolling warehouses are becoming a liability. I don’t see his offspring hoeing weeds in my garden anytime soon but my bet is the next idea will make someone else just as rich.


This is all merely rambling because I’m too lazy to get up and do anything constructive, but my thought is that humans have been inventing new ways of accomplishing things since they first looked down and noticed their thumbs moved in opposition to their fingers. Our population may well have outgrown it’s playpen which among other problems may make things pretty painful in places, but humans seem to have an inborn drive to solve problems and to think that people will simply stop inventing because they can’t afford a Sunday drive in Plastic Paradise doesn’t seem realistic in my , as always, inexpert opinion.

[Licho]

Well, I allways thought this iw what post PO will look like. I still think that long distance travel will be more availiable (like in the beginning of 20th century, without oil, coal/electricity powered rails will prevail imo).
Large sectors of economy will be only "virtual", science experts, administration, most "services" will be online.
Most of the leisure and recreational activities will be computerized amd networked ones..
That's all because computers and networks need only minimal physical maintenance and support once established, and payoff is gigantic!

So yes, you will see farmers with horses and high tech mobiles (probably including powerfull general computer with broadband, camera and multimedia facilities, gps and set of tools usefull for farming).

Such world is slowly emergenging even right now!
Where? For example in africa, people with income <$2/day, no electricity or water are using them!
http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/08/24/ ... icatel.php

[xerces]

"So yes, you will see farmers with horses and high tech mobiles (probably including powerfull general computer with broadband, camera and multimedia facilities, gps and set of tools usefull for farming). "

Another aspect to consider is the topic of human-machine interfaces. We have no idea how user-interfaces will evolve in the coming decades. From the 70s to the present, we went from keyboards/consoles, to a whole set of (audio/visual/tactile)peripherals and a GUI based interface. It is entirely possible that in 2030 we may have wide-spread usage of tele-prescence booths. These are enclosed booths where the entire interior surface is a single audio/visual interface to a computer. Within these booths people can converse with other people from the otherside of the world in a near-perfect simulation of actually being there. Another technology that could become useful is augmented-reality goggles. Imagine strolling along your fields, pitchfork in hand, while all the time, your sun-glasses is relaying to you statistics on your field of corn along with expected market prices...etc. Meanwhile an avatar of the buyer of your corn from 100 miles away is rendered into your field of vision. All of these technologies cost a mere fraction of the energy of physically doing these tasks.

But who knows, we may figure out how to relay digital information directly into our brains. In which case the cyber world may be more real than the real world....and much richer.

[Pops]

Don’t know about the relative predominance of tele-prescence booths.

But the first mouse was made of wood: http://sloan.stanford.edu/MouseSite/Arc ... Mouse.html

[xerces]

This future is not only possible, but I think very plausible.

It's interesting to think about a world where extreme high tech co-exists with antiquated(but highly efficient) low tech.

Just imagine, a white-collar professional person of 2030 may spend the day in the following way:

7am:
Fill cisterns with pails of hand-pumped well water
Clean up the out-house
Water the garden,
check on the fields,
feed the fishes in the pond

9am-11am:
Virtual teleport to Tokyo for a project meeting,
upload a ton of reports/documents that you were working on last night
to the branch office server

11am-noon:
Eat a lunch of homemade bread and tofu in your living room,
while having a tele-meeting with your old friend from Frankfurt.

noon-3pm:
Working on integrating a software piece jointly being developed by your team and another team in India.

3:30-4:00pm:
You're supposed to be working, but instead you find yourself at your virtual asset center,checking on how your stocks and investments are doing. Pretty soon, you wander to the virtual peakcoal center and start chatting
with some other ppl about how coal has already peaked.

4:00-5:00pm:
Filling up an endless series of virtual TPS reports and making random conversation with colleagues at the virtual office.

5:00-7:00pm:
Brings out your mule from the barn and plows a small field,
simultaneously, your Augmented Reality goggle is allowing you to browse a virtual music store whose server is somewhere in Paris.

After a while, you see the delivery man coming down the road in a horse-drawn cart. He's delivering that solar panel that you ordered from the nearest city a week ago along with a bag of fertilizer.

7:00-8:00pm:
Eats dinner with your family. Dinner being composed of bread made from bulk grains that are all locally grown(by you or more likely by an agricultural company), vegetables, soy products, and a small fish grown from the pond.


8:00-10:00pm:

You virtual teleport with your entire family to a virtual rendering of a theater in switzerland where the country's finest orchestra is playing a concert in front of tens of millions of virtual attendents from all over the planet. The cost of the concert tickets is not even 1/100th the cost of that bag of fertilizer you bought.