Thanks for bringing this up. I will have to do some exploring and tracking to see what's happening.
I am largely in agreement with
John Michael Greer, that we are headed into a general long term collapse of global industrial culture. It's something that will unfold over centuries, with some occasional sudden rough transitions along the way. And of course there will be continual improvements happening throughout, too.
All this is a big part of why I cultivate transportation by bicycle. It's going to become more and more advantageous as the world evolves, and more and more helpful in steering that evolution in as positive direction as possible.
One fascinating dimension of this is the evolution of information technology. What we have accomplished is just stunning. I started writing computer programs around 1970 and I am still at it. I worked about twenty years in the semiconductor industry, helping keep Moore's Law on track, pushing the technology to pack ever more transistors on chips.
What could derail the semiconductor technology train and the information age it has brought? One curious link is economic - chip factories are incredibly expensive. Chip sales volumes have to be huge to keep the unit costs down, to amortize that astronomical up-front investment. If the global economy gets too soft & somehow it becomes too risky to keep building bigger factories... and how much of the business is driven by the advance in technology... slowing sales and slowing technology driving each other... the deviation-amplifying feedback loop we are already in, but just running backwards... that could get rough!
But looking at security, privacy, trust.... if the value of on-line services gets corrupted...
Another of my hobbies is handwriting, exchanging physical letters through the mail. It parallels my interest in bicycling. One of my fantasies nowadays is setting up an alternative postal system using bicycles. The US postal system is
facing bankruptcy these days - an alternative might come in handy surprisingly soon!
