[rogerhb]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('lotrfan55345', 'D')on't worry, I can turn it off for you.

[bobcousins]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Omnitir', ' ')The fact is, the technology to save us from peak oil largely already exists, and has for many decades.

The requirements to implement a tech-fix to PO isn’t radical new developments in technology,

[doufus]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Russian_Cowboy', 'T')here are some hard facts supporting the hypothesis that the rate of inventions is declining. I can come up with two. The first one is the shrinking salaries of research workers and growing unemployment among them. The second fact is more specific to the pharmaceutical industry:

[doufus]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Jack', 'R')egarding the Peak Oil Problem, from the article:

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '
')Even if we did throw money at the problem, it's not certain we could fix it. One of the strangest portents of the end of progress is the recent discovery that humans are losing their ability to come up with new ideas.

Jonathan Huebner is an amiable, very polite and very correct physicist who works at the Pentagon's Naval Air Warfare Center in China Lake, California. He took the job in 1985, when he was 26. An older scientist told him how lucky he was. In the course of his career, he could expect to see huge scientific and technological advances. But by 1990, Huebner had begun to suspect the old man was wrong. "The number of advances wasn't increasing exponentially, I hadn't seen as many as I had expected — not in any particular area, just generally."

Puzzled, he undertook some research of his own. He began to study the rate of significant innovations as catalogued in a standard work entitled The History of Science and Technology. After some elaborate mathematics, he came to a conclusion that raised serious questions about our continued ability to sustain progress. What he found was that the rate of innovation peaked in 1873 and has been declining ever since. In fact, our current rate of innovation — which Huebner puts at seven important technological developments per billion people per year — is about the same as it was in 1600. By 2024 it will have slumped to the same level as it was in the Dark Ages, the period between the end of the Roman empire and the start of the Middle Ages.

[Dezakin]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'T')here may be some element of truth. Perhaps the easy problems are
solved e.g. 2 logs make a lever and u can build a pyramid with that.
A fusion reactor is much harder but immensely more significant.

[DantesPeak]

Great article.

You don't need a degree in science to realize the rate of technological innvoation has slowed down greatly over the last ten years. What's going on here - isn't technology going to save us from PO?

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'A') possible declining trend for worldwide innovation
Jonathan Huebner

A comparison is made between a model of technology in which the level of technology advances exponentially without limit and a model with an economic limit. The model with an economic limit best fits data obtained from lists of events in the history of science and technology as well as the patent history in the United States. The rate of innovation peaked in the year 1873 and is now rapidly declining. We are at an estimated 85% of the economic limit of technology, and it is projected that we will reach 90% in 2018 and 95% in 2038.


There is a general consensus that technology is advancing exponentially, and that this advance will continue into the distant future. The basic assumption behind this view is that either there is no limit to technological advance, or if there is a limit, then we are far from reaching it. The history of technological innovation from the end of the Dark Ages to the present time is examined, and evidence is provided that we are closer to a technological limit than many people realize.

There are two different technological limits. The first limit is a physical one, due to the laws of physics, such as the impossibility of building a perpetual motion machine. The second limit is economic; it is physically possible to dig a canal from the Pacific Ocean to the Atlantic Ocean across the continental United States, but it is not economically feasible. This paper addresses the economic limit, as we will reach this limit before the physical limit.

[EnergyUnlimited]

In respect of nanotechnology:

All what we need is to design silicon dioxide based nano devices capable to replicate themself.

Doing so we will solve all imaginable problems.

[pea-jay]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('EnergyUnlimited', 'I')n respect of nanotechnology:

All what we need is to design silicon dioxide based nano devices capable to replicate themself.

Doing so we will solve all imaginable problems.

[garyp]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('DantesPeak', '
')You don't need a degree in science to realize the rate of technological innvoation has slowed down greatly over the last ten years. What's going on here - isn't technology going to save us from PO?

[KevO]

roads are more clogged and therefore slower than they were years ago and they ain't gonna get faster now.

Concorde was scrapped.

We've passed techno peak. Nearly all new technology is bad for the planet, adds to global warming and/or climate change or needs oil in it somewhere so no progress can be made there for long.

this is as good as it gets.

[Pops]

Bang for the buck.

We talk a lot about the inflation adjusted price of oil, I would like to see inflation adjusted numbers for building a mile of highway or rail, a foot of bridge or railcar, a Kw of hydroelectric generation or a sq. ft. of public building – and the life expectancy of each.

My gut feeling (which is usually wrong btw ) is that sided by side with the cost of innovation is the cost of implementation – when new tech becomes the new standard every system becomes more expensive, complex and fragile.

Perhaps it my Ludism showing, but my grandmas wringer washer had one, 2-position, electro-mechanical control device and would last for decades...

when I compare that primitive contraption with the fairly new computer controlled, micro-switch activated, servo-regulated, plastic fastened, water leaking and floor walking piece of crap now sitting in my service porch...

Which, btw, has so many Innovations it can be programmed to calculate the correct water temperature/spin rate/water volume/agitation speed/cycle time/buzzer duration based on everything from the number of teeth in my jeans zipper to the phase of the moon…

But might only last the length of the warrantee without service - if I'm lucky…

I kind of think that the theory of diminishing returns; isn’t a theory at all.

[TheTurtle]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Pops', '
')But might only last the length of the warrantee without service - if I'm lucky…

I kind of think that the theory of diminishing returns; isn’t a theory at all.

[grabby]

JUST PUT A CARBUERETOR ON IT.
tAKE OUT ALL THE BAD NANO WIRES.

[grabby]

There is a book called "When things bite back" It is a compilation of exampples how over the years, when we use technology to solve a problem, generally three more unseen problems are developed.

It is a strong arguement for going back to a simple life.

Nothing EVER works as expected.

I believe the greatest technological marvel ever built that DID NOT USE COMPUTER TECHNOLOGY but use mostly mechanical mechanisms, was the saturn 5 rocket.
The world hit is peak of usable technology in 1969 and it is down hill from there.

EVery program you buy now is not even yours when the upgrade comes you have to buy it or your program ceases functioning. Technology and copyrights just ensure income to the inventor for a pile of junk that was promised to work but often nver does.

The dumpster is a good place for most of these objects, go get your tennis shoes on and go for a walk and check out the birds and bees.

[PeakOiler]

It's a peakoil morning when you wake up with no power in the house.

The only light that worked was the 36 watt solar powered lamp. The turkey vulture that was electrocuted atop the utility pole at about 5:30 am knocked the power out for about 3.5 hrs.

The utility crew was able to restore the power very quickly because of fossil fuels. The utility crew's truck was not biodiesel, ethanol, hydrogen, or electrically powered, I noticed. Gasoline.

Just a little test run for the future?

Fragile infrastructure indeed.

[AtmaStorm]

People are the most stubborn creatures that walk the Earth.
Something tells me that the majority of people will deny it all, until they sit in the darkness of their powerless houses, no food, no water,
no protection as society disentegrates into anarchy all around them, choas and fear will rule. All manner of things and people will blamed, but let it be known that the only thing man can do if he wishes to start rebuilding is to point the finger as himself. If he can't, then we as a race have utterly failed. All of our acheivements and triumphs
will fade away forever, and time will steal away whatever legacy we have hoped to leave behind. It doesn't matter how smart or strong we are, it's how able we are to adapt to change.

[shortonoil]

Jonathan Huebner is actually identifying a continuing shift from individual learning to social learning that has resulted from more readily available and advancing technology . Individual and social leaning are the principle parts of Complex Culture; which is possible for humans because of our unique power of mimicry. Technology has a built in feed back system. Since mimicry is innate to the species, we usually mimic when possible. This produces a bias against individual learning, which is where original thought is derived. Technology has made it infinitely easier to mimic, which is infinitely easier than performing individual thought.

$this->bbcode_second_pass_code('', ' To fully appreciate our dependence on culture, we must look at the issue of individual vs. social learning. Individual learning is knowledge that is derived by the experience and experimentation of the individual. The number of people in any society that elect to practice it are significantly few. Our human culture overwhelming depends on social learning, which is just the act of copying someone else’s know how. Plagiarism is usually infinitely simpler that original development.
As an example take the construction of an early Paleolithic spear. The maker had to know how to make the stone tools to prepare the shaft, how to chip the fine grained stone to make a good point, how to make adhesives and fiber to mount the point, know which wood to use so that the spear would be the right weight and strength, what length to make the spear to optimize for throwing or stabbing and etc. Few of us could make more than a crude approximation of a Stone Age spear, though we could easily be taught. The knowledge of how to make complex artifacts is built up over many generations by the small modifications of many innovators. To function, we are completely dependent on complex traditions and skills, learned through imitation.
We master this necessary cultural learning process through the application of mimicry. When it comes to monkey see, monkey do, humans far outpace the monkey. The human ability to produce complex social structures is totally derived from our capacity to mimic. The complexity of culture appears to be based on a unique ability to acquire new behaviors by observation. This is know as “true imitation” in the lexicon of comparative psychologists. Experimental psychologists have devoted much time and effort into trying to determine if animals can learn by true imitation. True imitation is learning a behavior by seeing it done. Some excellent experiments indicate that there is a modest capacity for true imitation in many social species, but it appears to only play a limited role in animal learning behavior. Even our nearest relative, the chimpanzee, only show a limited ability to imitate. Comparisons of children to chimpanzee, show that children exceed adult animal capabilities at about the age of three. Similar studies performed with orangutans, parrots, and Capuchin monkeys, who have the highest brain/body mass ratio in the primate world, show that they have, compared to humans, weak imitation abilities. Imitation is without a doubt the mechanism that humans use to transmit and perpetuate complex cultural knowledge and traditions.


Taken from: Mind of a Predator - Transition2 chapter 3
to be released Jan 07


')

The human mind is an organ, just like other organs in the body. It evolved to improve the survival capabilities of a hunting gathering creature, in a localized environment, by giving us greater information processing abilities. It did not evolve to perform abstract thought. Abstract thought is a secondary by product of processes that we used for day to day actives. It is not innate to the creature and a mastery of it requires effort. Mimicry is innate and something we do so easily that we are usually unaware that we are even doing it.

[airstrip1]

Inertia rules in technology as in so many other areas of life which is why I expect 99.99999... % of the people using this board are tapping away on QWERTY keyboards. These were designed to slow down the users of manual typewriters so they did not end up locking the typebars. Despite the fact that this original fault was long ago fixed on electronic typewriters the keyboard layout still persists even though now it is a positive hinderance to most users who are not professionally trained touch typists.

At a more technical level the whole edifice of modern computing still largely relies on John Von Neumann's architecture formulated in the 1940's It was a brilliant piece of design but contains flaws that the industry has been battling with for over half a century. Anyone who has spent any time tuning systems that process large amounts of data will be well aware of the Von Neumann bottleneck that exists when data is transferred between the computers memory and its CPU. Attempts have been made to mitigate this problem by developing more efficient data caching and developing some forms of parallel processing but these have largely been palliatives rather than cures. Indeed, advances in software development such as Object Orientated programming and improvements in hardware actually make the situation worse because they give many IT professionals the impression that the problem is being fixed when in fact it is unresolved. Underlying the whole Tower of Babel that is modern computing is an engine design that is more than fifty years old. In order for the science really to advance a completely new architecture is needed. This will only emerge when the 'intellectual bottleneck' identified by John Backus in 1977 is breached. Such is the power of inertia that this is only really likely to happen when the faults in the existing design can no longer be patched over.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Von_Neumann_architecture

The typewriter keyboard and computer architecture are just one example of how resistant to change established technologies can be. Similar examples, such as the internal combustion engine can be found in almost every area of life. It usually takes a massive shock such as global war to override resistance to change and to push technologies forward.

[Ludi]

Don't forget that technology isn't just the way something is made, but the way something is done. Changes in agricultural technology occur very slowly, but this is an area in which we will need to see a rapid switch to different technologies. We are still stuck in the Green Revolution technologies, but need to move on to something more appropriate, definitely not "go back" as so many seem to think we should to pre-industrial agricultural technologies.

This is sort of my pet area of interest....

[Lore]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Omnitir', 'T')he requirements to implement a tech-fix to PO isn’t radical new developments in technology, it’s radical new changes in the way people think, in the way society functions.