ElM, energy isn't a big and growing problem, it's just a very ordinary cost of doing business. Energy has always been a cost of doing business. Millennia ago people used donkeys to convert grass to water lifting and plough pulling. They invented the wheel to reduce the energy needed to cart stuff to market. So on and on and on and on. Same old thing.
What matters is what's being achieved and what it's worth. What's being achieved is fantastically phenomenal.
Have a look at revenue per employee for Apple, Google etc. It's about $1.5 million. That's astronomical. In India and Africa, revenue per person is about zero. In China it's not far from zero. But that $1.5 million is just the tip of the iceberg.
Those companies are producing a huge consumer surplus. The consumer surplus doesn't show in figures. It shows when you watch people with their Cyberphones. It's like I predicted 20 years ago when I was saying people would prefer to lose their left arm than permanently lose their Cyberphone. This is the biggest thing ever. Bigger than all of human history and bigger even than all of biological history. Bigger even than the invention of bucket chemistry and DNA which was pretty good as an invention, but just a stepping stone on the way to what's happening right now, right before our eyes.
Long ago now, Steve Joy wrote a book Why The Future Doesn't Need Us. I need Google really because maybe I got his name or the book a bit wrong. Google is not so sloppy with memory. Nor as mortal.
Mobile Cyberspace is not like a screwdriver. People still think Cyberspace is a tool. No it's not. It is taking over the cognitive development part of evolution that humans attained pre-eminence over. It's symbiotic. Maybe even independent.
To understand what it is, we need to get theological and teleological. We don't know where we're going, but we're on our way. The four forces of the apocalypse [strong, weak, electromagnetic and gravity] don't exist to provide fatso people with another Big Mac and a big car. They are more purposeful. We need to add the fifth force, consciousness, which provides the observer which forces the wave functions expressed by those 4 forces to drop into reality.
Energy isn't a problem, it's just an entropy cost of doing business and seeing where those 5 forces of the Cosmos are taking us, or themselves, or whatever the heck is going on. I'm pretty sure the end state isn't a large primate that can't even keep a car on a road at only 100 km per hour and gets drunk,then runs out of telomeres and conks out.
The consumer surplus for Cyberspace is astronomical. When there's a big consumer surplus, you will see crowds of people throwing money in.
Mqurice |
