"Garbage eschatology (I claim credit for this neologism) is based on the
premise that our technological infrastructure has acquired too much
complexity for us to fix. It will kill us not by turning sentient and
(for whatever obscure reason)
wanting to kill us, but by
stupidly and dumbly collapsing on top of us, like a gigantic Windows
Vista, while we watch, powerless to prevent our impending accidental
death. Technology will kill us by collapsing into a pile of rubble,
turning the planet into a gigantic landfill. (...).
My view is based on the idea that the entropy of a software system
(broadly defined to include the civilization-ware that runs the planet,
including the mechanically embodied computational intelligence of such
things as sewer systems) inevitably increases with time, past a point
of no-return. Beyond that, we cannot stop it from collapsing under its
own weight, and cannot marshal the resources to reverse the aging
process either. The best we can do is hide and then emerge from the
rubble and build ourselves Mad Max or
Waterworld civilization resurrections. And don’t waste your time agonizing. We
probably crossed that threshold in the 14th century, by my calculations."
Venkatesh Rao =
Joseph Tainter with a sense of humour.
Read the whole thing. Via
Ran Prieur.
