The Long Emergency is a must read for anyone serious about considering what lies ahead for our fossil fuel dependent civilization. I’m assuming anyone reading this post has already read “The Crash Course”.
One of the areas that Kunstler examines well and covers in his novels and ‘Too Much Magic’ also is our false sense of technological security. Technology, like any 'eco’system is very intertwined and therefore interdependent. As the foundation of fossil fuel energy collapses and the complexity of the system begins to spontaneously simplify ( which it must do since complexity is supported by energy flows ), then various technologies will begin to fail or become unstable and ‘new’ or rediscovered old ones will take their place.
I am reminded about the current situation in Siberia and Alaska where the perma frost is melting. The trees are losing their footings. The root systems have long be anchored in frozen soils and now they are in very unstable soil. The trees are leaning and falling. The whole ecosystem is changing.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/04/140417-drunken-trees-melting-permafrost-global-warming-science/
So, when we think about the future uses of technology we have to remain flexible (resilient is one of this site’s favorite words) and be ready to abandon failing systems and invent or adopt others. Kunstler does this well in his writing. So does John Michael Greer especially in his new novel “Retrotopia”. Another good read on this subject which I’ve mentioned before is Dimitry Orlov’s latest book “The Technosphere”.
To hope for our current technologies to continue will require shunting more and more of the remaining energy flows to fewer and fewer people. The rest of us will end up like the homeless. Chris and Jim commented on this in the interview with the comment that the cutting back of the last 16 years has primarily been felt by the middle class. As long as we support and ‘believe in’ a bigger and better world of technological then we are supporting the reallocation of resources more and more away from less complex systems that can more equally involve and benefit people.
In the middle ages the little excess of the agricultural output of communities was funneled into building huge cathedrals. Our current support of technology has a similar feel to me. At least with the cathedrals everyone could go and pray or just look at the splendor of the architecture. Technology is much more pay as you go and so is much less egalitarian.