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Kirim: 20-08-2013 04:39
This is another fine post by Mr Greer...There are a lot of hieddn technologies that are fundamental to the current way of living, but there are 2 that are definitely my favourite: Plastics and Radio. Plastics are used in so many ways that it is utterly impossible to be in a ordinary living room of a European or American and to look in a direction where there isn't a plastic. I even suggested long ago in some talks that, if we have to use oil for something, let it be for plastics ( even if only as thermal insulants ). Radio is a backbone of communications that is very reliable and energetically cost effective and it is possibly the last reason that people will have to generate electricity after all the lamps, computers, washing machines, freezers, etc... go to the way of the junkyard. People in this age simply do not understand how a cheap and reliable communication medium is valuable, atleast until a earthquake or other natural disaster cuts it....I have to somewhat disagree with you in a point though: most likely the end of the North African bread basket has much more to do with the destruction by lack of maintenance of the terrace-based agriculture ( a very useful technique still used today in the Mediterranean Europe ( like in Portugal where I live... just search "Alto douro" in the web ), that prevents erosion at the same time that helps retaining water, a ever-present worry in dry subtropical agriculture ). This seems to had been a centuries wide process that started still in the late Roman years and that ended near the Arab conquest. It had most likely nothing to do with climate changes there ( but it is a good example of lack of maintenance of small things can lead to major disasters ).To end, there is a indispensible technology that is all but gone: wood craftmanship, especially of big trees wood. Working wood in various shapes is very dificult and it will be a sorely needed knowledge when melting metal becomes too much expensive to make all metal machines. My biggest worry about that is the transoceanic sail ships, that need trees that don't exist ( in the same way that it is impossible to make repairs to the Qheops cedar barge found near the Pyramid named after him: there are no Cedars big enough to make the pieces of the size the original had )and craftsmen that will probably have to relearn all of the art by themselfes. That alone may be enough to cut the new world from the old for some centuries, until the trees grow. In fact I read recently a study that strongly suggests that the European age of Sail was only possible to the XIV century depopulation of Europe, that allowed the growth of very large oaks and that the naval supremacy of the various european countries had much to do with the level of care they had with their large oaks ( that were fundamental to make the keels of large wooden ships in Europe ). The ones that overused their oaks, like Portugal, started to make less strong ships that more times sanked that finished trips ( if you understand Portuguese, you can read Histf3ria Tre1gico-Maritima to see that the ships were clearly badly built, overused and with bad capitains ), while England had the good sense of using their oaks in a much more phased plan and took care of not making bad ships. I fear that the lack of good wood craftmen and of good woods in acessible spots will make things much harder that they could be, because when metal parts become expensive, all the plows, ships and machinery in general are made of wood with metal in small quantities where it is really needed.Of course this are the words of the current holder of a atleast century wide wood craftsmen family in a country where the mechanical beasts were rare until maybe 40 years ago......