11-14-07
Sooner or later, there will be no oil left to fuel the world’s armies, and the machines of war that now exist will be obsolete. Warfare then will be more about information and less about tanks and planes. But in the meantime, humans have invested much in petroleum-based war machines, and they are going to use them to make war for the last of the petroleum. As it happens, the US has more invested in war machines than any other group on Earth, and people in the US have a culture that allows them to bomb cities full of innocent people and then feel righteous about it afterward. So, rather than slip quietly into irrelevance, or get up and do something positive, the US will make war for the remaining oil until the oil is gone, or all its machines are destroyed, whichever comes first. At the end of the ‘game,’ (the end of the current phase of the ‘game’) the last oil wells and refineries will dry up, still surrounded by fairy rings of quiet rusting tanks, trucks, and jets, most of them stamped ‘made in USA.’
Nations, networks, or groups that want to be players in the next round will need to find a way to project their power that does not rely on petroleum. The internet and digital communications technology seem like an obvious route for the smart but oil-poor to project power. It may be that the flowering of industrial democracy was set in motion by the printing press, which meant de facto press freedom by its very existence. (See Marshall McLuhan Understanding the Media 1964.) It may also be that the newer communications tech will lead even more quickly to a less oligarchic and more transparent democracy.*
* Often there has been fear that computer technology would mainly favor the forces of oppression. But on balance, I think networking benefits the individual. Networking technology allows a more direct route to the benefits of organization than conventional structures.
**Networked individuals in themselves present a corrosive influence on all government power. In theory one can see that if the ‘government’ represents the ‘collective,’ as it used to, then all of our human conformity impulses work in favor of our doing what they expect us to do. But networks make alternative collectives possible, and the immediacy of the contact may have people more loyal to their voluntary networks of peers than to the government.
** It’s easy to see how an email list or calling circle works faster and better than a monthly
meeting at the schoolhouse, but what does that say about representative government?
Networked individuals can run around the world before a congress or a committee can get its boots on. Presumably, in a fight for relevance, Congress will network itself; members will appear live via teleconference at first, but eventually, all ‘debate’ will consist of dueling holograms beamed in from Rancho Rico. It won’t be enough for Congressmen to all look like lawyers. When the projected holograms gather to mug for pictures they will resemble The Village People, as each seek to project his or her message in an increasingly bizarre and clown-like display of caricature. Some will beam in their feeds with lead-in lines and theme music, wear shades and vamp like pseudo movie stars. Others may find that the newly available portrait software is helpful, which takes the holo-feed and filters it, making the subject conventionally younger, thinner, with a stronger chin, and eyes that could be dialed from ‘CEO’ to ‘sex kitten.’