I have a new column today on OnlySky. It’s about a better world that’s coming, and that may not be as far off as you’d guess. The technologies we need to create this world aren’t sci-fi; they all already exist. They just need to be put together in a single package. When they do, civilization is going to be radically transformed.
In the near future, ultra-cheap renewable energy is going to drive out expensive, polluting fossil fuel. Advanced agricultural robotics will take over the jobs that once required grueling human labor. Automated manufacturing will end sweatshops and allow every community to make the things it needs for itself. Electric mass transit and self-driving cars will bring about the end of car culture and suburban sprawl. When you put all these pieces together, what does the completed jigsaw look like?
Read the excerpt below, then click through to see the full piece. This column is free to read, but paid members of OnlySky get some extra perks, like a subscriber-only newsletter and the ability to post comments.
At the top of the list is solar power. Solar (and renewable energy in general) has two crucial traits: it’s incredibly cheap—now far cheaper than fossil fuel—and it’s available everywhere, which makes it inherently decentralized. These facts point to a radically different future than the world we’re used to, where oil, gas and coal have to be transported over long distances from where they’re dug up to where they’re burned.
There are other transformative technologies in the pipeline as well. When you combine them with abundant clean energy, you can glimpse one possible future, like catching sight of a distant valley through a gap in the clouds. Call this possibility the solarpunk future, after the name coined by literary and artistic dreamers.
” self-driving cars will bring about the end of car culture”
You had me going there for a minute. Why not throw in transporters and lightsabers while you’re at it?
i know it’s fun to rip on the musky one, but human drivers cause so much death, i have to think it wouldn’t be wildly difficult to get ai cars to where they can do better.
on the flip, i can’t imagine those who love cars losing interest because options changed.
Advanced agricultural robotics will take over the jobs that once required grueling human labor. Automated manufacturing will end sweatshops and allow every community to make the things it needs for itself. Electric mass transit and self-driving cars will bring about the end of car culture and suburban sprawl. When you put all these pieces together, what does the completed jigsaw look like?
Among other things, permanent double-digit structural unemployment. And quite possibility, chronic political instability and civil strife among young people with no jobs, no solid connection to the broader money economy, and no legitimate outlet for their frustrations.
We will need to change society in a very foundational way. Current society is based on the idea that people do work that is supposed to be useful for keeping society running, and are paid so they can keep themselves going. At the same time, people derive at least some level of meaning to their lives from the paid work they do for much of their lives. Once AI+robots can do the bulk of this stuff we will need a different model, both for how people get what they need (and desire), and what kind of meaningful activities they’ll be doing.
@3 Raging Bee — Indeed. A society where order can barely be maintained only through fear of extreme repercussion. Something like, I don’t know, fascism?
Or alternatively, a post-scarcity post-work society?
Doesn’t matter how cheap solar gets, it’s not going to supply our winter heating needs up here at 56 degrees north.
Not directly and locally, but… well, interconnectors exist, and of course synthetic fuels (from hydrogen up) can be synthesised from solar elsewhere and shipped the same as conventional fuels.
(Also, total insolation is what counts; sunny days vs cloudy days very much matter, latitude aside)