Comments by "Mat Broomfield" (@matbroomfield) on "Welcome to the Hybrid Age. | Big Think" video.

  1. But didn't we live without fire for 950,000 years of our evolution? But it's irrelevant - fire is not a technology that could be taken from us like computers,or even the skill to make metal. We know how to make it in lots of ways. the spirit of the comment that we're dependent upon technology was modern technology, not the most basic tool use, which is a function of our intelligence, not the availability of the tools. If you took away fire, we'd still be eating cooked food by tomorrow.
    1
  2. Man has always required specialists to survive - hunters, gatherers, farmers. I could no more have become a farmer or hunter overnight 20,000 years ago, than I could now. It's true that our lives are dependent upon technology, but it's not that we are more vulnerable BECAUSE of the technology, but because of the scale of our commuinites and the centralisation of food production sources. Add to that the loss of farmland and places wild animals can grow, none of which are technological issues
    1
  3. Clearly, to ask a population to switch overnight from a blue/white collar consumer existence, to a manual labour egrarian lifestyle overnight would be quite impossible, but there's not much about such an existence that would require even months of training - most of it is just back-breaking work, with a few specialist co-ordinators. The number of people to do the work is proprtional to the number to feed, so it's no more complex than it ever was. We just break into small groups again.
    1
  4. I disagree. Admittedly, more efficient food production was brought about by less labour intensive methods of sowing and reaping, but with beasts of burden, and a less wasteful mindset, we could easily maintain our farming. Science facillitated better farming, just as it enabled better transport infrastructure enabling mega-communities, but once that work is one, it doesn't instantly disappear. If we reverted to eating locally produced produce, given notice, we could revert to self-sufficiency.
    1
  5. Hear hear!
    1
  6. Lol - but nature will always win. If you burn everything, nature will come up with some kind of ash disease!
    1
  7. You make an interesting point, but I disagree with it.Over 95% (my guesstimate) of the first world is dedicated to non-essential jobs: administration, production of non-essential products, and jobs in leisure. If they all switched back to production of the things necessary for survival, I imagine, that now, as always, that they would be able to clothe and feed themselves without digital age technology, as they always have. Of course, if fuel ran out today, with no warning, a lot of us would die.
    1
  8. Oh it's certainly true that life would be less comfortable, but in fact, the rise and spread of some super-viruses, such as swine flu, MRSA, NDM-1 and others,have only become a threat thanks to technology, just as flu became lethal to the Incas. Small, non-mobile communities who have a good knowledge of hygene, would perhap be considerably less vulnerable to disease than you might initially suspect. But simple things like tooth ache, child birth, and broken bone would be very serious again.
    1
  9. Actually, none of these are survival basics - they're life enhancement tools. Animals have none of them except shelter and they survive just fine.
    1
  10. So there's no carnivorous animals in temperate countries? So all these tribes that live in the jungle never eat meat? Hmmm. All that happens is that communities use meat differently. It's shared amongst more people and eaten quicker.
    1
  11. Actually 50 million people died of flu in 1918, compared to 25-75 million from black death in 1350 (which was a much higher proportion of the world's population at the time). Of course, science has all but eradicated TB, and greatly controlled malaria, but new diseases are constantly arising. I think it's nature's way of keeping us in check.
    1