Retro-Futurism and associated

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Hi guys,

I'm a keen believer in Retro Futurism and Peak civilization anachronism, this is basically the idea that instead of flying cars and cures for cancer in the future, society will head backwards, the days before plastics and oil.

The world in Fallout3 is Retro Futurism, a lot of the final fantasy games are also retro futurisms and go back to using steam powered air ships etc.

So My question is this, what do you think will happen at the end of the finite resources we have, will we just head backwards to the days before oil or will we find something else ?

Peak civilization anachronism is also the idea that technological advancement will also slow down between now and peak oil because it is the oil resources that ultimately allow most of the technical advancements we have made in the 20th and 21st century.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retro-futurism

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_civilization_anachronism

 

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When Peak Oil happens (which it will at some point) I'm relying on my brother in law!

He is a true hunter gatherer, makes fire, skins anirmals to make clothes and knows which berries to eat

 

I'm not fortunate to have a ray mears style brother, so . . . I'll just have to bitch and moan about it and go down with the ship in a typical British Stylee

 

Retro Futurism is always based on hope and the "best case scenario" with more than a little fantasy thrown in. Just look at the "Jetsons". Sure, the cartoon was completely unrealistic, but it did represent the 1960s version of how the values of that decade would translate into the future. The problem is that our "values" have been eroding that future, ala "global warming" and the consumption of finite and non-renewable resources.

According to a NPR News article, global warming is irreversible. On the one hand, that makes everything seem pretty hopeless, but on the other hand, the article suggests that we, as a world population, need to be particularly aggressive in our reduction of carbon dioxide emissions. It's like smoking cigarettes. Doctors warn us and warn us that it's bad for our health, but we never *really* try to quit until we are diagnosed with lung cancer and given a prognosis of 3 months to live.

What's going to happen? I don't know. With the world economy being what it is, most people have shifted (if they have any brains) into survival mode, and are just trying to take care of their immediate needs, reducing personal debt, and re-thinking their overall financial plan. It's tough to see "the long haul", but people have been deliberately ignorant of the "real" future for far too long.

EDIT: By the way, I *love* retro futurism (didn't know it had a name until now). I find it very entertaining to see what past decades thought the 21st century would be like. "Everyone" missed microprocessor development in the 1980s, which led to personal computing and ultimately, the "personal" Internet (Government and University access to the precursor of the Internet, ARPANET, was available in the 1970s). Fun stuff, when you want to indulge in fantasy.

 

I don't really agree
partly because I have seen first hand what is achievable without using oil
we have the technology, and many of us have the will to move away from it

our core reliance for the most part these days is electricity, not oil directly
and electricity can be made in many numerous ways

oil too now is being made artificially, the research we poured into the problem over the past few years is producing results, bio diesel can be made from algae and food crops (algae good, food crops bad!)

We have the technology to carry on if non renewable oil vanished over night, we currently don't have the will