[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 because it would become impossible to sustain such a big population as we have now. 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.

I have pretty much rejected the idea that colonizing space can give us relief from our problems on earth. We either master our problems on earth, or we just replicate them on other worlds in probably a pretty short period of time. People fleeing an over crowded, polluted, depleted earth could probably destroy a pristine earth-like world in just a few hundred years.

I am sometimes called a luddite because I actually do favor a more simple life of massively reduced consumerism as a response to global warming. A small minority of the brightest and most inquisitive could live in cities that are basically high tech research campuses. But about 95% of people would live pleasant lives in the countryside where they indulge in simple pleasures and work for about 16 hours per week.

I think that it is actually what a lot of people want, and they just don't realize it. Or they don't think that it is realistic to want that. Or they just resolutely believe that others won't want it, so they go along to get along.

But I think that it is the truly rational response to global warming. A technological messiah might solve the problem. But waiting for any sort of messiah is usually not a solution to anything, ever. So the sane response is to massively curb consumerism. And massively curbing consumerism completely destroys the concept of the continuously growing economy. So we would lose the majority of the world's jobs. We would have a whole bunch of people with nothing to do. Basically, their job would become living environmentally healthy lives and learning to enjoy themselves without setting gasoline on fire.

I agree that space colonization without changing the attitude would not be a completely proper solution. Moreover, in such a scenario the Humanity could become a sort of 'Space Locust'. But there's a principal difference. Space colonization helps spread human species which technically rises its chances for survival in general and buys Humanity more time. While on Earth humans are much more cornered with the problem of limited resources. So I had to mention it to specify the conditions for my further reasoning.

To add to what you've mentioned, limiting the consumerism alone would not be enough. Humanity will inevitably face the over-population problem. Even if the society you've described is possible it would still hit certain limits. So it's either environmentally healthy way of life has to include Medieval-style medicare to 'naturally' limit the lifespan or people have to get more reasonable about having and raising kids.