From: ur-valhalla!adi.co.nz!till (Till Noever)
Subject: Free Energy World
Message-ID: 
Date: Mon, 16 Oct 1995 14:42:09 +1200

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 mark.squire@dinuba.com (MARK SQUIRE) wrote:

> Ok here's another question.  I have my own ideas on this, but how
> would it change our society if free energy were in widespread use?

Well, as I've said before, I don't believe in the existence of 'free-
energy' (the term is an oxymoron) - but that's not the issue. Let us
suppose instead that there was a way to generate large amounts of
energy (in fact just about any amount we need to run our lives)
cheaply, and on a small scale (that is, requiring no fossil fuels,
expensive technology - for generation and/or distribution, and
available in such a way that it won't require large utilities to
supply it). Something John Doe could whip up in his own backyard, as
it were.

How it would change our society? Well, I think that it is one of the
four things that would indeed change the face of our society beyond
recognition. The other three are:

a) significant extension of the human lifespan (into centuries) - and
that's the most important one,

b) the invention of a device that could make communications absolutely
uninterceptible, and

c) a technology to move large numbers of people off-planet and to
other inhabitable worlds (if such exist).

*How* would these things change our society? The 'energy' issue in
particular?

Well, I suspect that it would initially be catastrophic. The portion
of economic activity allocated to the generation and distribution of
energy in our societies is phenomenal. A collapse of that sector would
inevitably lead to stock-market collapse, wide-scale destruction of
economies (in the west as well as in th oil-supplying countries), and
a complete re-arrangement of a lot of political power-structures. The
availability of such energy would also change the basis of applied
technology, in the commercial, as well as the military sector - with
consequences that we can only vaguely estimate (it all depends on what
is involved in the implementation of the technology).

We are hypothesizing here, of course, that 'free-energy' (I use that
term that with grinding teeth, by the way) technology is such that it
cannot be controlled by governments or large-scale monopolies. If this
prerequisite is _not_ fulfilled then the situation would look quite
different again -and, indeed, it assumes certain nightmarish qualities
that I'd rather not think about.

Anyhow, that was a good question, you asked there! Be interesting to
see what else people come up with.

Regards
Till


->  Posted by: till@adi.co.nz (Till Noever)

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