[Serious] The Post-Technological World.

[Smaug]

I imagine that post-tech world could occur if Humanity reaches a certain 'plateau' in science. Thanks to the advances in science the technology has been growing at a relatively steep rate from the early 1800's. Of course this resulted not only in big benefits but also in major problems such as pollution, global war risk etc. But at least we have hope that science would bring solutions to our current problems. There is another problem though. Scientific knowledge has been getting ever more complicated over the time. Different areas of study are getting more and more specialized yet it's clear that there are many intricate interconnections between them. A day could come when Humanity will no longer be able to sustain current rate of growth both in science and technology. This could result in a situation when qualitative growth halts but quantitative growth persists. If Human race isn't actively colonizing space by then it would become a grave problem. Earth would get over-harvested with no hope for a more light-handed solution, which would gradually result in wars for basic resources etc. This would be accompanied with gradual deterioration of existing high-tech installations which would lead to all kinds of disasters (Bhopal and Chernobyl-style). The result may be a heavily polluted agrarian world where only the privileged use technology more complicated than simple mechanical tools. And the technicians may be considered 'wizards'. Such crisis may as well result in a rise of religiously-backed Luddism.

I wrote all this in an assumption that human nature doesn't change considerably over time.