{"id":12821,"date":"2011-12-30T11:20:48","date_gmt":"2011-12-30T16:20:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=12821"},"modified":"2011-12-30T11:20:48","modified_gmt":"2011-12-30T16:20:48","slug":"next-up-on-the-global-agenda-the-soft-dark-ages","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2011\/12\/30\/next-up-on-the-global-agenda-the-soft-dark-ages\/","title":{"rendered":"Next up on the global agenda: the “soft” dark ages"},"content":{"rendered":"

Occasional commenter “Lickmuffin” sent a link to this article<\/a> saying “Overly optimistic outlook here, I’m afraid. What good is digital storage when there won’t be any electricity?”:<\/p>\n

\n

We were discussing the dark ages, which not only were characterized by the disintegration of the Roman political order, but also the loss of an immense store of practical technological knowledge: agricultural practices and implements; construction techniques — it would take until the 19th century for Europeans to match the Romans\u2019 road-building prowess — war machines; distribution and warehousing; science; art (which in Roman times was the realm of artisans, not self-absorbed \u201ctransgressive\u201d pricks). <\/p>\n

I said that I think we are headed for a \u201csoft dark ages.\u201d That took him aback. \u201cHow are we headed there,\u201d he asked, \u201cand how would they be \u2018soft\u2019?\u201d<\/p>\n

I answered his last question first. They would be \u201csoft\u201d because unlike what happened in Roman times, we have the ability to store gigantic amounts of information in small spaces. One person can carry around encyclopedic knowledge on a flash drive. Multiply him by the millions, and you have a vast repository of recoverable knowledge that is private, widely dispersed, and replicated many times over. No matter how determined or persistent this era\u2019s barbarians — Marxists, Muslims, Democrats, unionists, academicians — they simply would not be able to track down and destroy all modern technological knowledge.<\/p>\n

But beyond furtive individual efforts at hiding and protecting the knowledge we would need to create a New America or a New West, there would be vaster, more organized, more collective efforts to protect knowledge until better days. I suggested to Bob three institutions or concepts that would become the next dark ages\u2019 hallmarks: The new castle fortress; the new monastic life; and the new Europe.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Occasional commenter “Lickmuffin” sent a link to this article saying “Overly optimistic outlook here, I’m afraid. What good is digital storage when there won’t be any electricity?”: We were discussing the dark ages, which not only were characterized by the disintegration of the Roman political order, but also the loss of an immense store of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,15],"tags":[495,86,561],"class_list":["post-12821","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-history","category-technology","tag-civilization","tag-criticism","tag-rome"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-3kN","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12821","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12821"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12821\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12822,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12821\/revisions\/12822"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12821"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12821"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12821"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}