Peak Oil > The Singularity - A thread
When trying to outline future challenges, a lot of attention is typically given to advanced technology, like blockchain, genetic engineering, wired brain, increased digitalization of the world, and AI, culminating in the Singularity.
While this kind of thinking is important, as our dreams reveal something about ourselves irrespective of the degree of realization, I think there are other possible challenges that may equally or more merit our attention.
The advancement of these technologies depends on our access to cheap energy resources, primarily fossil fuels, which with continued growth (not hindered by f.e. a pandemic) won’t be possible for much longer. I see no answer to Peak Oil.
Peak Oil isn’t the sexiest discourse – interactions of quantities of energy resources, economy, extraction techniques, disinformation – I prefer to get my hands less “dirty”, dealing with something more purely of the mind, but that doesn’t mean peak oil doesn’t merit attention.
What may face us, if Peak Oil thinkers like Michael Ruppert got it right, seems to be something between a chaotic collapse of the globalization and the emergence of political orders based less on fragile, global complexity, and more on geography and ecological limitation.