2526. Gardenworld and tech.

We have a lot of thinking to do and we are not good at it.

"Custom does not breed understanding, but takes its place, teaching people to make their way contentedly through the world without knowing what the world is, nor what they think of it, nor what they are." - Santayana

Decentralization. If fossil fuel injunctions or spontaneous breakdowns lead to less truck and car traffic all institutions in society will be affected and most brought to a halt. This seems like bad news, but it is what reducing climate damage actually requires.(And needs to happen faster than anyone is planning for. ) Supply chains are likely to be broken as workers, protecting families, don’t come to work . We can imagine that the people, confused, gather in the street and start conversations about what to do. This emergent local community building may be mafia like or cooperative. Hard to predict which.

Centralization: the tech scenario. There is a growing awareness that we need world governance to cope and impose uncomfortable solutions. Using big data and algorithms under the management of big platforms (Google, Facebook, Apple) in joint efforts with governments, will try to manage the world distribution of work and product. Many in Silicon Valley have this vision of tech and corporations managing the world.

I think the future will be an attempt to integrate these two, which I am calling Gardenworld. Garden rather than agriculture implies a more modest and more attractive path. With less energy local organization is forced, but we hope we can keep enough of the internet going to create a shared understanding of the world and share best practices in communities of practice. The weakness in this approach is that corporations and financial wealth will try to control the whole infrastructure.