One of the interesting effects of advancing technology is a progressive
reduction in economies of scale in many industries and systems. Some of
the bottleneck technologies you note do have some interesting, if still
speculative, alternatives. Railways, for instance. New proposed systems
like SkyTran or Hyperloop have significantly lower economies of scale
than conventional rail--deliberately so because they find themselves
challenged by political conservatives increasingly resistant to 'big
ticket' infrastructure investments. There have also been small scale
systems overlooked in the conventional urban context, like cable car
systems or, one of my favorites, the 'banana monorail' (
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_mvBDdWJsM ) which has been
experimentally adapted to passenger use in the developing world context.
( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=icXHfnw-gaw ) These have always looked
like a lot of fun to me, and could have potential space applications as
the supports for the cableway can be designed to be self-supporting and
quick-deployable. In Cambodia there was an aid program to encourage
rural development through the supply of a kind of simple general purpose
modular motor that could be adapted to many uses. One of the ingenious
uses devised by locals was a simple rail car that could be used on the
long-abandoned traditional rail system. Called the 'bamboo train', these
have now become something of a tourist attraction in themselves. (
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ilJAczgfmHk )
Satellites have also started to see hints of competition from new kinds
of lower economy of scale systems, sometimes based on very old
technology revived with new technology. Satellites have long had a
problem of taking so long to deploy--because of their Faberge Egg mode
of development--that they have frequently gone obsolete before they
could pay for themselves. Sometimes as soon as they have been launched.
And so the telecommunications industry has long been interested in
alternatives that had some capability for continuous upgrade. Space
stations proved too expensive for that, but it has compelled the
development of alternatives like stratospheric airships and aircraft
relying on solar power. I long corresponded with a developer of these,
Michael Walden in Las Vegas. Though more limited in terrestrial
footprint, these are so less costly and risky to deploy that using them
in larger numbers to make up for the difference in coverage is
practical, while offering benefits of much more transmission power, much
lower latency, and much more bandwidth thanks to the potentially larger
payloads and solar power capacity.
Shipping now finds competition, at least in some niches, from revived
sailing vessels, such as the Fair Trade Cruisers which now travel to the
under-served markets of West Africa and South America. (
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EzBKbWL_Mjs ) With the benefit of new
technology, new kinds of sailing vessels based on technologies like
rigid solar wingsails, offer potential to make this increasingly viable.
I think these things represent a long term trend in the Post-Industrial
era. Industrial demassification is driven by the shrinking economies of
scale afforded by advancing technology--one of the key factors eroding
Industrial Age paradigms from within.
On 6/18/16 2:49 PM, [email protected] wrote:
Subject:
Re: [P2P-F] [NetworkedLabour] A note on the post-capitalist strategy
of the P2P Foundation
From:
Kevin Carson <[email protected]>
Date:
6/18/16, 2:49 PM
CC:
p2p-foundation <[email protected]>,
"[email protected]" <[email protected]>
The technologies I'm thinking of are the kinds of open-source
micromanufacturing machine tools, smelting furnaces etc. being
developed by groups like Open Source Ecology, and tabletop CNC
machinery being developed by the open hardware community more
generally; open-source machinery like the tractors, compressed earth
block machines, sawmills and so forth also being developed by OSE;
small-scale intensive food production techniques like Permaculture;
and so on.
I don't question that there are still many bottleneck technologies
that require large scale and capital outlay -- microprocessors
probably the most significant.
Railroads are another bottleneck industry.
I don't think electrical power generation is so much -- generating
capability can be pretty well dispersed. And if photovoltaic
generators still require larger, more capital-intensive facilities to
produce, other kinds of renewable power -- wind, or using solar
reflectors as heat source for a steam-powered generator -- are
producible at the local level. I may be wrong -- I'm a layman on
computer hardware issues -- but I think the hosting capability of
server farms can be pretty widely distributed among many small
facilities over a large area.
But to my mind the most important thing is that the *preponderance* of
small-scale means of production for local consumption means a much
smaller portion of the economy than in the past, and probably a much
smaller portion in the near future than at present, will be critical
bottlenecks subject to capitalist control.
And the fewer the bottlenecks, and the less time-sensitive they are
(as a result of the increasing availability of expedients like
reprogrammable micro-chips, recycling old hardware for functions where
lower levels of processing capacity are sufficient, increasing
cradle-to-cradle recycling of materials in landfills using local
processing facilities like mini-mills, and less dependance on
long-distance transportation in general thanks to economic
relocalization), the more slack/insulation local economies will have
for riding out periods of impasse before they actually have to be
restocked from the remaining bottlenecks. That means the bottlenecks,
while still remaining, will provide a lot less leverage.
Not saying there won't be a final phase of violence at the last stage
of the transition as the most critical remaining centralized stuff
changes hands, but it will probably be a lot smaller in scale and with
a vastly shifted correlation of forces -- a mopping-up operation
against capitalist-state forces that have already been strategically
outmaneuvered.
--
Eric Hunting
[email protected]
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