#techno-topic

Ultimately, though, technology can never stop collapse because collapse is caused by greater complexity, and technology is one facet of complexity. The diminishing marginal returns of complexity make a society susceptible to all manner of various proximate causes for collapse, including invasion, ecological devastation, and others. Technological solutions address the proximate causes of collapse, but they do so only by exacerbating the ultimate cause of collapse, by introducing still greater complexity. Technology is part of the problem we face, not because technology is, in itself, “bad,” but because the accumulated unintended consequences of those technologies — especially Jevons Paradox — have continued to hound us. Technology can provide momentary relief or put off the inevitable, but only by compounding the problem still further. The crisis of too much complexity can never be solved by creating still more complexity, just as you can’t save your burning house by spraying gasoline on it. Ultimately, what we face is a systemic problem. No technical solution is possible to systemic problems; they can only be solved by changing the system.

Ultimately, a new technology is another piece of complexity, and ultimately it is precisely that complexity, rather than any one crisis we presently face, that is the ultimate cause of collapse. Other crises may serve as a proximate cause, but it is the marginal return curve on complexity itself that seals the fate of any complex society. Thus, any “techno-fix” solution may succeed in solving any given proximate cause for collapse, only by contributing still more to the ultimate cause of collapse — complexity itself. Neither is this considering the profoundly negative, unexpected consequences that so many technologies yield. Technology is subject to diminishing returns; that means that innovation will not end, only that it will become (on average) increasingly mundane, but it will continue to cost more and more. Moreover, technology cannot solve the underlying, systemic issues we face. Technology has its place, and it can be a wonderful thing — but it is not a panacea, and the exuberant faith of the Enlightenment in it is certainly misplaced.