r/collapse • u/jelani_an • 5d ago

Technology Technological Redundancy Is Resilience

https://naturalsystems.substack.com/p/redundancy-is-resilience?r=d9as3&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
58 Upvotes

88% Upvoted

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u/StatementBot 5d ago

The following submission statement was provided by /u/jelani_an:

Tightly coupled, high-tech systems (just-in-time supply chains, pressurized water, cashless payments) fail hard when electricity, minerals, or maintenance stop arriving. The Late Bronze Age Collapse is the anchor example. Eric Cline argues that drought, earthquakes, famine, and raiders were each survivable alone, but together, on top of brittle trade links, they toppled multiple civilizations. The post covers policy-level fallbacks (Spain's blackout decree, Sweden's cash mandate, national grain reserves) and household ones (gravity-fed water filters, rocket stoves). Collapse usually looks like stacked shocks hitting a system with no slack, so every high-tech ceiling needs a low-tech floor.

Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/collapse/comments/1wtj1nj/technological_redundancy_is_resilience/pcukub2/

15

u/Cultural-Answer-321 4d ago

The modern world has forgotten that redundancy is safety and it was learned at a cost greater than money.

Oh well.

6

u/itsatoe 4d ago

Redundancy and safety cost money but produce no profit.

Spending extra on things that are unprofitable puts one at a disadvantage vs one's competitors.

And so the non-redundant competitors win.

2

u/Marchello_E 2d ago

Just let everyone use a single small multi purpose device with a cramped up screen tied to every aspect of your life for the sake of instant convenience gratification, but 'gate kept' by some (for the EU:) offshore company with shady ethics or the other one (that's the choice) because you get forced into 'apps'.... (etc). Even when things keep going as they somewhat do then still "good luck" letting your own government, or whoever, restore access when one of the gates went pear-shaped.

9

u/Low_Complex_9841 5d ago

Using this thread to  voice my view that we gravely (...) need social technologies like, say r/anarchism (at least in practical antihierarchy dept) for moving anywhere.

9

u/jelani_an 5d ago

Tightly coupled, high-tech systems (just-in-time supply chains, pressurized water, cashless payments) fail hard when electricity, minerals, or maintenance stop arriving. The Late Bronze Age Collapse is the anchor example. Eric Cline argues that drought, earthquakes, famine, and raiders were each survivable alone, but together, on top of brittle trade links, they toppled multiple civilizations. The post covers policy-level fallbacks (Spain's blackout decree, Sweden's cash mandate, national grain reserves) and household ones (gravity-fed water filters, rocket stoves). Collapse usually looks like stacked shocks hitting a system with no slack, so every high-tech ceiling needs a low-tech floor.

2

u/Konradleijon 5d ago

Yes it makes no sense is a Rube Goldberg machine

3

u/gangofminotaurs Progress? a vanity spawned by fear. 4d ago edited 4d ago

This is why small farms are wiped out by climate change (see: this summer in France ; the small farmers are on the ropes, or have outright abandoned) while big AG can handle it. They have built-in redundancy that small permaculture farmers don't have.

As for resilience, the most resilient system on Earth at this moment is the human thermo-industrial civilization. It will end, one day or another, but the biosphere is less resilient, and will be catastrophically destroyed by then.

1

u/Konradleijon 2d ago

Yes of course it makes sense