05.09.08
When Technology Fails
From R-G
by Richard Heinberg
from MuseLetter #193 / May 2008
Foreword to When Technology Fails: : A Manual for Self-Reliance &
Planetary Survival (second edition) by Matthew Stein
Technology will fail. You can count on it.
We humans have been making tools for tens of thousands of years. For a
similarly long stretch of time we’ve been talking to ourselves and to
one another, developing the other strategy that has made us so
formidable as a species – languagemaking. Language helped us refine and
expand our toolmaking and tool use (imagine trying to produce something
as simple as a stone knife if you couldn’t benefit from anyone else’s
experience); meanwhile, we invented a range of tools to increase our
ability to communicate (writing, printing, the telephone, radio,
television, computer networks, and so on). These two strategies -
toolmaking and languagemaking – have together made us the most
successful large-bodied animal species in planetary history.
Energy always set the rules of the game. All animals obtain their basic
biological energy through food (second-hand sunlight), and exert energy
through muscles to get what they want and need. Tools helped us leverage
muscle energy, and language gave us social power by enabling us to
cooperatively strategize, and to diffuse our ideas over distance and
time. Both enabled us to appropriate more and more biosphere functions
for our own purposes. But always we remained subject to the net energy
principle: it takes energy to get energy, and the net marginal profit
(from hunting or gardening or farming) was limited and variable, even
with the help of bows and arrows, horse collars, and plows.
During the past two centuries, fossil fuels made net energy effectively
irrelevant. Suddenly we had access to energy sources produced over
geologic time that we could draw down at arbitrarily high rates. The
energy required to explore and drill for oil was trivial compared to the
energy we could get from burning the stuff. With cheap, high-quality,
concentrated fossil energy sources, we could make far more tools than
ever before, including mobile ones that carried their energy supply with
them. We could make tool networks. We could mechanize production
processes. We could free nearly everyone from food-producing routines
for other occupations – as factory workers, managers, salespeople,
accountants, computer programmers, or advertising artists.
As a result we now live in what French philosopher Jacques Ellul
famously called the “technological society” – though he might equally
have called it the “fossil-fuel society”. It is a pattern of living so
suffused with, and linked by, powered tool and information systems that
we have become overwhelming as a species (we’ve taken over about forty
percent of the biological productivity of the planet), but utterly
vulnerable as individuals. All that’s necessary to cripple us is for the
electricity to go out for a few days.
Indeed, the entire system has failure built into it. It is based on the
ever-increasing consumption of depleting, non-renewable energy
resources. As we consume the cheapest, most easily accessed of those
resources and are forced down the net-energy ladder, the technological
systems on which we have come to depend will inevitably shudder and give
way.
That’s what I mean when I say technology will fail.
But don’t take my word for it. A recent issue of New Scientist (April 05
2008) explored the emerging study of how and why complex societies tend
to collapse, leading with an article titled, “Why the Demise of
Civilization May Be Inevitable”.
Many people think of modern technology as if it were a magical,
autonomous entity capable of overcoming our ancient net-energy
constraints. In reality, modern technology has merely increased our
exposure to collapse. We should stop assuming that just because we’re
smarter than the ancient Romans and Mayans, we can’t be brought down by
analogous system failures.
Once we begin to come to terms with all of this, what should we do?
Start by identifying tools that are not dependent on the systems most
likely to fail. In other words, find tools you can rely on that don’t
require fossil fuels or an operating electricity grid system.
Re-learn the skills that enabled our ancestors to thrive without fossil
fuels. Get in touch with others who are similarly interested in
surviving collapse, and work with them to create community resilience.
Not all of the tools and skills that are likely to be helpful to us are
ancient. A good solar cooker, for example, can enable us to heat food
cheaply and conveniently without natural gas or electricity – and the
solar cookers available today are far more effective than anything that
might have been used by tribal peoples in ages past. In other instances,
though, we are likely to find ourselves treading well-worn paths,
developing ever more respect for how people in traditional societies
intelligently solved life’s persistent problems.
For the most part, simpler technologies are likely to be less
environmentally ruinous than the high-powered tool systems on which we
have come to rely. Thus any effort we make to return to more reliable
and resilient tools will also constitute a giant step toward
sustainability and environmentally responsible self-sufficiency.
Clearly, information resources will be enormously helpful in our
learning (or re-learning) process. That’s where this book comes in.
When I saw the first edition of When Technology Fails in 2000, I was
impressed. Here was a comprehensive review of the tools and skills – and
the literature – anyone would need in order to get by as technological
society hit the skids.
Now, Matthew Stein has updated his classic text, adding a new chapter on
proactive actions for making the shift toward sustainability (both
personal and global), and updating all the existing chapters with the
latest information, including resource guides. The first edition was
written before 9/11, when the term “peak oil” was relatively unknown and
“global warming” was still considered a fringe topic. A lot has changed
in the world since then.
A single book can’t do everything. There is just too much we need to
know. Moreover, many skills need to be learned directly from a teacher
(you might be able to learn to operate a fire drill on the basis of
diagrams, but for me it took personal interaction with someone who was
already good at using one). Nevertheless, When Technology Fails succeeds
at just about everything we could realistically hope one book might do
to inform us ahead of when technology does falter.
Will technology warn us before it fails? It seems to me that it is doing
so now. The price of oil is setting new records almost daily.
Electricity grids are straining and buckling in countries around the
world. Food prices are skyrocketing and food riots are erupting. All you
have to do is turn on your computer and surf the Internet for a few
minutes and technology will reveal to you all you need to know about how
vulnerable technology is making us.
Get ready. Read this book and follow its suggestions for skills
development and further research. Adjust your own oxygen mask before
helping others.
_____
Read more about Richard’s book, Peak Everything at
http://www.richardheinberg.com/books
Post Carbon Institute – 6971 Sebastopol Avenue – Sebastopol – California
- 95472 – USA
http://richardheinberg.com/museletter/193