The Future of Nougat

If someone actually read this blog, they would quickly notice that post apocalyptic scenarios are discussed fairly often. Even with a short history of posts, doomsday scenarios and a zombie filled post apocalypse has been a top tag. While I often try to dispel the notion that these Apocalyptical fantasies are not my primary preoccupation, I admit they fascinate me. The notion of a crumbling civilization causing a huge jump backwards in human technology has much of the country, even much of the world, captivated. One only has to look at the upcoming Movies and TV shows that people are looking forward too, like Hunger Games, or the Mad Max reboot.

I'm a big fan of Sci-fi and Fantasy. And though I am often disappointed with many of the entries in these genres, when Sci-fi and Fantasy is done well, it is amazing. As with the Post Apocalyptical sub genre of Sci-Fi, there are three big reasons why they grab me, and these are possibly the same reasons they are so popular for everyone else.

No. 1 - The world needs to burn.

There is the human fascination with destruction that gets people eager to see the next crappy Roland Emmerich movie. That same fascination with natural disasters could also explain the Force of Nature aspect to the Japanese Daikaiju sub genre. Whether it is Tsunamis, Asteroids, Zombie viruses, Alien invaders or even Gojira (Godzilla), People seem to be curiously enthralled by the idea of certain annihilation. While some of these scenarios have their survival and rising above themes, sometimes there is nothing the protagonist can do but sit back and watch the world end. Is it that we feel guilty as a race, and do we deserve extinction? Humans are polluting the planet, and killing each other. Could there be a universal subconscious notion that the pestilence of humanity needs to be wiped out? Are humans just oddly intrigued by death and destruction? This is one of those questions a psychologist might best answer, and well worth looking into further.

No 2. - Some of us just wish for a simpler time to return.

I will be first to admit, my math skills are not much past middle school level. I don't have any aptitude for computer science, and I don't have any specialized skills that will be of any use in the coming decades. That doesn't mean that I'm am completely unskilled. In fact, I have many skills and talents that many would find valuable, I'm very much a Jack of all Trades, however few of those skills have advanced much since the 19th century. With backgrounds in construction and art, I have endless possibilities for building beautiful and functional things. Home improvements and repairs are a cinch, but dose this leave me destined to be simply a lowly maintenance person who paints on the side? If civilization crumbled and technology was thrown back a few hundred years, I might do ok; in fact I might do great.

Sometimes the craving for a post apocalyptic world is not the craving for destruction and chaos, but the craving for relevance and usefulness by a Jack of all trades.

There are plenty of out of work artists and construction workers, and in this more technological and business orientated society, programing or sales are where the higher paying jobs seem to be. I often think about going back to school to learn skills in the medical industry, as all of my jobs are ok for survival, but none are good for profitable work. But in a post apocalyptical world, all my random skills might make me thrive. Endless hours watching survival shows and Macgyver have me ready to improvise in times of crisis.

I might not be as well of as some rural polymaths geniuses, or die hard as Ex Military survivalists, but I might do ok. I actually worry more about having to survive in our modern world than the notion of surviving in a barren sparsely populated Apocolypse. Perhaps this is just delusion, and surviving such a world would be a nightmare, but why are are so many people obsessed with the post apocalypse? Most of these people have in mind something that they could build, something that doesn't needing build today, but in this fantasy world, they would have value when they might not see that value in the real world. If they could build something that is useful today, would they still have this preoccupation with the the post apocalyptic? Yes, we all love our modern technology, we all love our gadgets and our streaming Netflix, but it is proven that all this shit doesn't make us happy. To be happy and content do we need to feel useful and necessary? Nostalgia for past eras of human history is not new. Maybe some people think they would feel more useful in another century. But since we can't travel back in time, we will just have to wait for civilization to crumble to make the technology of centuries past paramount again.

No. 3 - We just are not making any progress forward.

This will have to be a short and sweet explanation, as there are so many things to talk about when it comes to the changes that May come in the future. Topics like Space Colonization, Trans Humanism and Artificial Intelligence are all very far out scientific prospects for a distant future. All of these goals are hindered, now and in the foreseeable future by the politics, economics, and mindset of the world today.

There are just so many factors that seem to be keeping the world at war with one another that any progress forward seems to be impossible. And if we can not go forward, and if Change is a constant, then staying the way we are now is not a possibility at all, so the only way to go is backwards. If the nations of the world, and fringe groups of extremist causes prohibit further advancement in science and civilization, then eventual we will find ourselves thrown back into another dark age. Right now, we are only developing technology for short term economic goals, there are no grand visions or projects that have national attention. Without frontiers, Civilization will erode from within. We are too focused on our personal happiness, and there are few endeavors which people will sacrifice for any longer.

I like to think of a future moment it time as The Great Transition, the moment when we cross a scientific barrier. A barrier so monumental, that all of human culture and civilization takes a huge leap forward, from which it will be difficult to devolve backwards. All of humanity would benefit, and though vague, it is a goal I believe is worth pursuing. It might be like the first step up on the Kardashev Scale, when we go from Type 0 Civilization, to a true Type 1. The Great Transition might be another scientific breakthrough or combination of breakthroughs. The problem is there are to many factors hindering true progress, and until some of those are solved, it seems inevitable that we are on our way to stumbling backwards technologically.

So either we advance, or we will be forced to fall backwards, but maybe we Have it Coming? We may think we might be better off, but that preoccupation with a post apocalyptic world and delusions of prosperity within it are likely flawed. All we can say with certainty is that culture in 1st world countries are obsessed with post apocalypse scenarios. Why this preoccupation exists is just as fascinating as theorizing how possible these future Post Apocalyptic scenarios actually are.

Nougat 45's

Much of yesterday was spent obsessing over a pice of obsolete machinery. Something that only a debilitatingly nostalgic person would pay the slightest attention to. And it is that nostalgia, and also my interest in the past that made the day so fun.

A friend of mine has a vintage Wurlitzer, Americana III Jukebox. And with it are boxes of very eclectic 45's from the previous owner. Everything from Christmas music from the 50's, Rock and Roll from the 60's, Disco Music of the 70's and Pop hits of the 80's. Then of course, nothing newer than the mid 80's. The day was the second time we opened up the system to swap out 45's. The Jukebox was hardly used before we first looked into boxes surplus of 45's months ago. The original selection wasn't much to listen to, but once we found 45 after 45 of classic hits we loved, the juke box became a hit at the house.

The Americana III isn't the prettiest of Jukeboxes, but to open it up and see it's inner workings is still completely fascinating. Everything functions mechanically, and has done so for 4o years. Gears spinning, dials clicking, and rotors turning. It was a symphony of noise and analog technology. As we went though record after record, we kept getting faked out. There might be one or two 45's from a band or singer we liked, but none of them had any of the hits or songs we liked. There were Bands from a similar era and style, but classics we hoped we would find were not there. The fun was the exploring of a cache, even though if we wanted to we could get any MP3 to any song we wanted instantly. The juke box had space for 110 45's, or 220 songs. The boxes had a few hundred other 45's, but many were repeats or something few could appreciate today. Now days, you can get all the MP3's you can fit onto an iPod, and have a way better selection, quality, and capacity. Still, the fact that we were limited in selection didn't matter. It was again, the tactile experience, and exploring the treasure of old songs. These 45's are real, they may be obsolete, but they are Real. While the digital age may way out preform, I argue that keeping the aesthetics of the mechanical and the sensory dynamic of a tactile medium has its value.

Just today I saw this (probably staged) youtube video a young girl puzzled by a Vinyl LP. Even I had an idea of outdated technology as a kid, but maybe I watched to many old tv shows and movies. Already all these (not so) old technologies are a mystery to These Damn Kids Today, but hopefully some of them with a passion for the obsolete might also one day have an afternoon exploring old boxes of 45's get a kick out of playing the music from generations past on an old Wurlitzer Jukebox.

Your iNougat will be useless after the Data Apocalypse

Every day makes me feel like more and more of and old curmudgeon. As technology advances by leaps and bounds, my mind grasps for nostalgia rather than advancement. But why is this?

Apple just announced it's iBooks 2 Textbook service. And especially in light of the recent discovery of Foxconn and Mike Daisey's account of working conditions, I am even more sickened by technology. I too was once a die hard Apple Devotee. I still have my First computer a, Woz edition Apple IIgs that I never plan on giving up. And like Daisey, I too didn't fully grasp where all our technology came from, and as he did, imagined long robot equipped assembly lines. But this post wasn't intended to be about Foxconn, or the many other technology factories with abysmal labor conditions, but it will be hard to separate that bad taste from the sour smell of things to come in the Information Age.

Book publishers are panicking, everything is in E-book form from newspapers to novels and now text books. I don't see this as bad, but it is still sad to see a time warn trade die. Book publishers are in the direct line of fire from Amazon.com. Now, the publishers can come and go, but the idea that the printed page might soon become only a novelty is sad. Kodak has filed for bankruptcy protection, with digital imaging replacing traditional photography, the centuries old company is becoming obsolete. It't not the businesses collapsing that worry me, its the lost of the industry in general, and the lost of these methods for producing concrete photographs and printed documents.

There are rumblings of a future Data Apocalypse, and it has many forms and implications. One of the most significant is simply Data Storage. There are no archival methods for digitally storing information. Roughly every 5 to 10 years, all that data has to be updated on to new systems as hard drives, flash media, and computer operating systems changes. Even if you were to etch a tungsten disk with binary information that would be nearly indestructible, if you tried to read it 100 years later, how would your be able to read it? The computer software that coded the file could have been lost. Even with the data intact, the method to read it is not archival.

A friend once told me, "A sharp blade will never be obsolete." With that idea in mind, I also see the Printed page being the same way. Even if a language might become obsolete in time, the lifespan of an archival low acid paper and the language that the words are written in will outlive several generations of computer formats.

Perhaps it is just the unease with how dedicated we are to technology, that even though my computer is very important to me, I still like to have some traditional technology at my disposal that doesn't require logins or batteries. Maybe my mind is too focused on a fictional zombie apocalypse scenarios, and want to know how to survive with 20th century comfort with 19th century technology. My fixation with a zombie apocalypse, or any apocalypse for that matter is subject for a future post.

In 1859 the worst solar storm ever recorded hit the Earth. A coronal mass ejection shot towards Earth at the peak of a 500 year solar maximum. Thankfully technology of those days was still mostly steam and horse power. However, telegraph stations in the Northern US experienced an electro magnetic burst, causing telegraph lines to ignite and telegraph stations to burn down. And what would happen if this happened today? Im sure there are some bad History Channel shows which sensationalize this topic. It would be a technological Apocalypse or Techocalypse. This would be a major earth changing event, and one that would set back the technological age a few decades. Computer systems would fry. Simple lighting might take days or weeks to repair, but the data, the vast stores of data in computers, severs and in the cloud, what would happen to that? Would it wipe away clean all information, or would it just damage the systems permanently?

And if society has to rebuild, what could we fall back on if the last printed book on any given topic is decades old? We would not only be thrown back to pre electricity lifestyle for a period of time. When we begin to rebuild, we might initially only be able to climb up to the time when the last printed information in Science, Engineering and Medicine was printed.

The future might give us some sort new technology, one that will effectively give us a Save point. Right now, given some ability, we probably would not be thrown any further back in time before electricity became widely used. Other circumstances would have to be in effect to throw us back further, but in the future we might find a new Save point, one that might lock technology from not being likely to fall back further than that level of achievement.

Who knows when that future save point might be, or what it is. Till then, keep a few books around, cause when the power goes out, you won't be able to go to Google to solve your problems.