An interesting and frightening read:

http://www.information-age.com/article/ ... rgy_crisis

Power begets heat,

Heat requires cooling

Cooling begets more heat...

It sounds as if:

1) The internet is not immune from peak oil/peak NG/peak coal.

2) Carbon taxes, or other restrictions - if implemented - may have some side effects on the cost and availability of information in intranets and the internet

3) We cannot expect cheap and dependable internet services as electricity supplies become less reliable.

From that, I would conclude that peak oil is likely to degrade the quality and quantity of internet communications in 10-20 years.

Yes?

Yes, I agree completely. I think that the Internet will be enormously important in the near-term post-Peak, as entire industries shift to a telecommuting workforce. So for a while, it'll be very important to have a connected computer and the skills to work it. But in the mid- to long-term, this is just one of the many things that will likely strain our grid and power sources past capacity. So it'll be just as important to be able to function without the computer as well. Get your IT chops up... and learn bicycle repair and bell pepper cultivation at the same time.

Hmm... I guess that means about 20% of all the UKs power requirement is going to feed millions of masturbating cockney bastards and their very titillating JPEGs...

Given that the computer's overwhelmingly main functionality currently is internet-related... No internet means no computer for the vast majority of people. Hell for most people it means no new nudie pics.

The problem with computer "work" as I see it is that not only will the equipment become obsolete and useless, so will the knowledge, and the power. The reason for turning the thing on will never be worth it. And with a good stash of porn, who needs to be online? Hell, with multiple girlfriends, the computer is totally a waste of time.

We could work with a much scaled down system but I doubt very much I can get off to x-rated ASCII art.

*gulp*

As we all know, life without Internet was perfectly possible 20 years ago, therefore there is no reason, why it would be impossible, should Internet "fizzle out" within next 20 years into the future.
Much of Internet use is a waste of time anyway, therefore productivity will go up in many cases.
Need for more manual paperwork will also help to keep existing jobs and even create more of them.

What happened to the paperless office? Looks like the trees will get it all over again.

No, high energy costs will make lumbering and the paper industry very costly. That makes for a lot higher paper prices. If paperwork is to be done manually, it will have to be done at very low wages to keep the businesses profitable.

And that just adds in on all the costs that will increase after PO. (To not speak of seriously slowing demand!) And who will suffer from it: The worker. I know that I'd rather hunt and gather for my food than being a poor typist. What a life...

People will not accept a decrease in the living standard. That is why civilisation will collapse after PO. It will be too hard for most people to adjust to a less convenient lifestyle.

Torjus Gaaren

People have, and people will, accept lower living standards.

And paperwork will still be more expensive than electronic systems. Electronic systems are here to stay.

Bartleby the Scrivener

I suspect that in reality paper and computers is one of those Jevon type things. Computers were supposed to eliminate paperwork, but in reality we use more paper now than ever.

As far as I can see computers are just another hedonistic waste of energy that will be swept away without another thought when humans are forced to confront the hard realities of life. BW is quite right. The most profound impact will be all the middle aged men suddenly cut off from their supply of internet porn.

Smallpox girl is very right in one aspect:
COMPUTERS ARE WASTING PAPER, NOT SAVING IT.
Abandoning needless computer work will save many trees and create new jobs.
IT is creating demand on nonsense documentation, which no one needed before.


Any non-VR prostitute should be fond of it.

Your argument is self-defeating.
PO will force peoples to abandon "convenient life style" and they will accept it.
If someone had binded your feet in setting concrete and thrown you into a lake, you will accept that you are drowning, even if you do not like it.
We will not have much hunters-gatherers as a result of PO, however we will have plenty of poor typists, domestic servants, beggers, child miners etc.

Until you go on retirement at least, may be few decades/centuries more.
It all depend of cheap and abundant electricity.

If we do not go thermonuclear [fusion], than days of IT are counted.

Re. the masturbating masses:

All that rhythmic hand motion is reciprocating inertial mass, which is normally absorbed by the cushions on the furniture upon which the masturbator sits or reclines. Now if we were to replace the cushy cushions with a firm surface and install piezoelectric transducers or perhaps some kind of linear induction generators in the framework of the furniture, we might be able to recapture some usable fraction of the energy that was used to transmit and receive the porn.

And if we were to switch off the porn at just the "right" moment for any given person viewing, the "biological inertia" of the neurotransmitters in their brains and spines would cause the rhythmic hand motion to continue, sans computer, for long enough to achieve their desired end-results.

Any given human can produce about 200 to 250 watts of electric power on a pedal-powered generator, so if we assume that masturbating consumes an equal number of calories per minute (as the figures appear to indicate), and the transducers and suchlike capture about 1/3 of it, then we have a capture rate of 60 watts per person per wank session. If their laptop computers consume on average 35 watts of power, then they are producing, for some period of time, more power than their computers (plus their apportioned fractions of the servers, routers, and suchlike) are consuming.

This in turn, if properly synchronized, could even produce the appearance of over-unity performance. Though, as we all know, over-unity performance is a-priori impossible, so in fact this would merely be tapping an ambient energy field comprised of individual biological units distributed across the grid.

(In case anyone's wondering, the above is geek humor.)

----

Seriously though, about that internet.

The gloomy energy consumption figures utterly fail to consider the comparison with miles driven by automobile, and other physical resources, that are no longer consumed as communication replaces transportation.

The increase in paper consumption is primarily due to people printing out rough drafts and other hard copies that are used once (e.g. to scribble editing notes in the margins) and thrown away. This will cease as the price of paper increases to reflect increasing costs of production.

This leads to an interesting opportunity for research. It would appear that our sustainable community project may join forces with another such group, to the point where the result could be an ecovillage of over 100 households. This of course has potential to demonstrate sustainable design in all of the infrastructure. I'm going to be designing the telephone system; others including a couple of my coworkers, will be designing the data network. We could use this ecovillage as a test case, a research platform, and publish the results. Hmm...