A invisible brick wall?

Might there be a so far invisible brick wall in the conjunction area or even point where the economy and energy meet the cultural momentum of politics (bouth youth and the ordinary)?


It might sound like a rather far-fetched idea, but it's actually pretty simple.
1. If you think about that the western world is very used to having a abundant source of energy that translates into (as well as powers) all the current IT-infrastructure. This infrastructure has further on made all communication and cultural "buzz" not only alot cheaper (compare old printed newspaper and telephones to twitter, facebook and cellphones) but also vastly more used. At least it seems to since we have alot more information, and we produce alot more information than ever before. Now, all that information turnaround, storage etc needs today roughly 10% all worldwide energy consumption.
2. Now, if we consider that both energy prices and developments costs for new technology are both rising, it would mean that we all need to make use of what is available more efficiently, both in terms of used energy and how much information we process. Since much of the transition to IT-systems have over the decades been motivated by both rising complexy of the information transmitted and by steadily lower costs of transmitting them. However it has all been dependent on better and better technology - which in turn has historically in modern times occured during and era of cheap, readily available energy - crude oil. Lower returns on crude oil together with bigger technical challenges (in IC-research and design) mean both an steadier agglomeration and tighter clustering in the company structures on a saturated world market, but also that it is uncertain wether the technological development will heed in broad, but internally different technologies, or if it will be very streamlined, similar technologies by narrow standards (similar to today cross-patenting "cartel" which is btw a very functional way at the moment):
3. Now for the cultural and political part. We have today more or less a ruling generation of politicians that in the opinion of some (mostly, but not all) younger people, don't have any ideas or solutions for the looming problems of the not so distant future a couple of years ahead.  Hope is therefore mounting on the younger generation that should be able to handle theese issues. And the issues are many, youth unemployment, catastrophic demographic projections for the more developed parts of the world, rising dept due to myriad of intertwined macroeconomic factor coupled to both part of the effects of globalisation and a shrinking resource base.  However the young generation has mostly (at least this is valid for the G20 countries) grown up in a problem free and pretty good environment. The immediate question is: are they prepared to cope with problems of the "old world" at the same time as they need to take on fundamentally new problems that occur in a vastly larger magnitude?Today there might be no definitive answer to that question. It's a Geographical debate on that, as well as a sociological. Still, the younger generations of lead nations (except India and China) are living in a world surrounded by hi-tech fixes, technological sub-system and are used more to information processesing - and at the same time living what seems to be a specialized, multi-identity lifestile who occur in parallell both in the the internet and the real world, thus enabling a interweave matrix of fusing the digital and the analog worlds. Also many of them dream of a brigther future that - at least in sweden for many would be a practical and cultural continuation of developing specialisation, identity,  lifestiles and individuality. One of the underlying evidences for this is the  steady rise of the euro-american economy on average for the last 20-25 years (take the stock market as a example).


But, when you couple theese 3 problem areas together, you get a puzzling picture.
On one hand, you have shortages, on the other hand you have younger generation that maybe are not prepared for such shortages of everything ranging from commodities to (today) information space.
Wouldn't it have a catastrophic result? And by the same time mean a really good time until that? Is it here where the brick wall manifests itself suddenly?
I don't believe so. It all depends, but i reasonable scenario might be that the adaptation to a either shrinking platform or a steady economical and resource platform in a continued globalized setting will mean
• realignment of todays economical hierarchies.
• a possibility to developed really new modes of production due to both knowledge of the "older world" as well as experience and knwoledge accumulated during the previous IT-eras (from 50/60 and onwards).
• Science and the technological advances of the 1900-hundreds might have a conservationist effect on older empirical knowledge, while still advancing further as long as resources and the socio-economical overhead permits (NoS - hypothesis, MK). This way, already known and empirically tested ways of agriculture etc that are not industrially dependent might be preserved and further on fused with advancing technologies (of today) in a new fashion.


 What that would also mean for to younger generations of today is that they while growing up in world that is in crisis and in decline, also will have oppurtunity to adapt at the same time ang get more efficient. That should also apply to the information stucture, the information itself. In a market fashion, the most useful coupled with cultural values will prevail, but in order to do so, they will have to be VERY energy efficient and probably have a functional layout and structure.
One concern is that might apply to population figures, as well as the employment pattern. Those that can't handle a re-transformation of the pattern from [rising complexity made possible by rising processing power] -> [maintaining complexity + high-tech made with low-tech for less energy, stability and security] will be excluded (as described by M.Castells), or at least be at risk?


In less abstract, and more practical terms this could translate in the next decade to the following problem:
 "If the costs for maintaing the IT-communications platform rise too sharply, at which level does it get too expensive and structure, companies and parts of society suddenly stand without the backbone of communication - which permeates everything today?"


There might therefore be a brick wall, parts of which could be avoided, but parts of which might grow depending on the choices we make.


 /Mark Kesper (Teheimar)


P.S This is a part of geography. D.S

Well. This is a screenshot of my (not mine, but mine to use) laptop. It's a dell E4300. A pretty nifty experience. Screenshot from Win 7 x86 Aero with all the windows stacked. Foobar is really good on laptops. However I miss the last.fm plugin (I'm Teheimar on Last.fm, http://www.lastfm.se/user/teheimar)
The battery is only 3 hours at most, but it's slim. I'll maybe add an SSD later on if there are any cheap and compatible.
Don't have acess to my main computer again, which is a bit of a pity.
/Teheimar.

So. Finally ready with my new CV. I must also put it online here. So far it's only in Swedish, but I should make an english translation as well.
It's a very straightforward document, but with many details.
 Here in Stockholm it's sunny.
The news are rather dull as usual, but that helps in concentrating on what's important. There is of course lot's of interesting events going on everywhere, but the reports in Swedish media are often either too short or too shallow. At least today.