![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
Something I saw sums it all up: I feel like Niven and Pournelle lost control of the script and it's been handed off to Stirling. This is just getting nuts. I mean, right now Baghdad looks like a better, safer, more civil place to be than New Orleans. I desperately want to go paddle around a half-submerged modern ruin, but at this rate I'd get shot at as a looter and chased by a post-apocalyptic, mohawk-sporting gang on steam-powered jetskies.
Will there be wider social effects from this? The US has been getting dangerous assured of our own moral and cultural superiority lately. Will watching a city devolve into utter barbarity over 2 days rattle our sense of security? When they start shooting at the looters, where else will the riots start? There are going to be all kinds of ugly racial issues to be exploited.
Gas prices at $4/gallon by next week, people are saying. Looks like $3something most places already. We've broken the alltime record gas price, no more fudging with inflation to obscure it. Finally, another energy crisis in my lifetime! I was raised to expect this at any moment. I think there should be a Critical Mass to go ride through the SUV dealerships on the eastside.
The really amazing thing is the lack of ability of the large institutions to assimilate the information quickly enough. Mass media and relief efforts both. Both of them seem 12-14 hours behind the information readily available on the internet. Once again, the several billion eyeballs of the internet win. If the emergency operations had been transparent, someone would have noticed that there were two levee breaks, not one. Or that the helicopters which were supposed to be dropping giant sandbags kept getting diverted to rescue missions. We're only just starting to see the power of decentralized, informal organization through the internet, and so far it has a pretty good record for managing to outperform classic bureaucracies. This would be the first time it has challenged pure governmental operations, though. At some point, people have to start wondering why we need all those inefficient monsters around in the first place. That will be interesting.
Will there be wider social effects from this? The US has been getting dangerous assured of our own moral and cultural superiority lately. Will watching a city devolve into utter barbarity over 2 days rattle our sense of security? When they start shooting at the looters, where else will the riots start? There are going to be all kinds of ugly racial issues to be exploited.
Gas prices at $4/gallon by next week, people are saying. Looks like $3something most places already. We've broken the alltime record gas price, no more fudging with inflation to obscure it. Finally, another energy crisis in my lifetime! I was raised to expect this at any moment. I think there should be a Critical Mass to go ride through the SUV dealerships on the eastside.
The really amazing thing is the lack of ability of the large institutions to assimilate the information quickly enough. Mass media and relief efforts both. Both of them seem 12-14 hours behind the information readily available on the internet. Once again, the several billion eyeballs of the internet win. If the emergency operations had been transparent, someone would have noticed that there were two levee breaks, not one. Or that the helicopters which were supposed to be dropping giant sandbags kept getting diverted to rescue missions. We're only just starting to see the power of decentralized, informal organization through the internet, and so far it has a pretty good record for managing to outperform classic bureaucracies. This would be the first time it has challenged pure governmental operations, though. At some point, people have to start wondering why we need all those inefficient monsters around in the first place. That will be interesting.
no subject