After worrying about food, shelter (including winter heating where I live), clothing, and health, a concern for the future will be how we communicate.
Communication technology has long been an interest of mine. Radio and telegraphy have been particularly interests. Using the internet consumes a bunch of my time each day, both for work and pleasure. And lately I have been caught up in this switch to digital television here in the States.
My guess is that most Americans (and Canadians, Europeans, and others surrounded by electronic technology) believe we will always have telephones, cell phones, television, satellites, cheap long distance, computers, and the internet.
I think when all is said in done, however, that we won't have any of these, and hope that we might at least have a working postal service.
So how will communicate? I don't know - how did people communicate 500 years ago? By person-to-person carrying of letters and stories, traveled there by foot, horse, and sail. And the town crier and over-the-fence gosiping. In the end, that is likely all we can count on having. Communication will be slow, but it will take place. It just may not go very far.
Why the pessimistic view?
Well, all of our modern communication depend on electricity, and high-tech production that use tight tolerances and materials that are rare (except for sand) and will become too costly for the average person to own or support. I just don't see it continuing after some point in time, as this will be closely tied to the loss of oil.
So what do we do in the meantime?
I know that I, for one, plan to spend as little money as possible on televisions and computers, to name two specific technologies Same with automobiles, which are likely to become expendable before the other items. All three need to be viewed as expendable, likely to get disposed. The novel,
World Made by Hand, by John Howard Kunstler, which I described in an earlier post, provided a good example of how that could happen. A critical constraint, at least for anything requiring electricity, which all electronic technologies need, can be taken away very easily. It doesn't have to disappear completely - just becoming inconsistent, starting with roaming blackouts, is enough to make its availability unpredictable. It will become easier to expect electricity not to be there at all, rather than sitting around waiting for it. Besides, when the electricity does come on, watching television or getting on the internet will be very low priorities compared to just making sure food can be cooked or cooled.
Forget about cell phones (mobiles). They will one of the first communication methods to disappear. I'm hoping basic telephone will be one of the last to die, along with basic radio, although even today's telephone system is very sophisticated and computerized behind the scenes. Television will disappear in the middle somewhere, especially now that it is going to digital broadcasting, which is a most complicated technology, requiring more sophisticated manufacturing of components and less tolerant of interference. Even computers, let alone the internet, will be less accessible, first due to rising costs and later due to lack of ability to keep it going; the government, military, and large corporation users will be the last to lose out, long after the idea of "personal" computing disappears.
It is best now to think about all of this being unavailable someday. The world is in effect going to get very large and very small at the same time. Very small in that one's area of movement will be small indeed, with communities effectively isolated from each other, which means in a time scale the world as a whole will become very large, too large for all but a few to know it or travel to see it.
Looked at it this way, it makes no sense to spend US$800, let alone $1,600 or more, on a new widescreen digital television. It is a poor investment given that it may become a useless object in a short time. Same goes for similar costs for a new computer. They just don't make sense anymore. But that 46-inch TV sure looks nice! And that new laptop sure would be fast!
Now if only I could break my habit today of using these technologies. Yet, as others will argue, we need to use these technologies all the more while we go through this transition to a post-oil world (and therefore by implication a post-electronic communication world). There is so much we need to learn, and to share, and time is short, which modern communication can help.
We will see what happens.
Cheers from Dubuque,
Kevin Anderson
