[coldtea]

>Being able to acquire, understand and act on the right information at the right time is probably extremely important to our civilization

It's important but not that much. We did just fine without it in the 90s, 80s, and 70s and earlier.

So at best we'd be back to the 80s level of efficiency.

Without energy and fossil fuels (and with no time to adjust to alternative sources, e.g. in a sudden disappearance) we'd get to pre-1920 age levels.

Cars wouldn't move, factories wouldn't work, no cargo transport, etc.

Losing "the right information at the right time" of the kind Google provides would be a walk in the park compared to that.

It's just that people tend to take for granted what earlier and not so glamorous foundations offer.

[simula67]

Modern energy is clearly how we are all living like kings. Without it, we would not be able to feed all the people, build sky scrapers, build transport lines, cars and other machines - basically on autopilot - so most people can sit at home and watch memes all day.

Of course losing access to energy would be far more catastrophic than losing access to search and computing. I was only making the point that it would be more than just annoying

[throwawayjava]

Again, I think this comparison is a bit contrived -- an entire industry vs. one product at one company. Google's search engine disappearing is more analogous to a railroad or pipeline subsidiary of an oil company. Life would continue, the railway/pipeline would be rebuilt, and in 10 years everything would be back to normal.

If you want to make an accurate analogy, compare the disappearance of oil to the disappearance of all modern computing. Both would be catastrophic.

Society is complex and has lots of interdependencies.

[coldtea]

>Again, I think this comparison is a bit contrived -- an entire industry vs. one product at one company. Google's search engine disappearing is more analogous to a railroad or pipeline subsidiary of an oil company.

You're focusing on the wrong thing on my argument. I used Google as a stand-in for web search in general -- regardless of company. Because for me, and most of the west, Google is that: all of search.

My argument wasn't really about the one company, or about not being able to replace the company (we could just use Bing and make do with it if that was all I meant it for).

What's more, I also think my argument would hold even if taken to mean the web in general (and not just search). It would still be less catastrophic (and quite mild after a small re-adjustment period) than losing the fossil energy sector.

>If you want to make an accurate analogy, compare the disappearance of oil to the disappearance of all modern computing. Both would be catastrophic.

Both would be catastrophic but the latter less so. We did fine with minimal to no computers in the 60s. We can always go back to that level, which is not that savage or even old. Without fossil fuels (and no transition period to slowly replace them in toto with alternative sources) there would be zombie apocalypse levels of mayhem.

[TeMPOraL]

> Without fossil fuels (and no transition period to slowly replace them in toto with alternative sources) there would be zombie apocalypse levels of mayhem.

I generally agree with your argument, but I'm not sure if, with sudden loss of general-purpose computing, we wouldn't have small-scale zombie apocalypse on our hands. The world has grown in many ways since the 60s - including population and complexity of supply chains. All of this would have to be scaled down, and here "scaled down" means mass loss of life.

[throwawayjava]

For starters, the sudden loss of all modern computing would cripple oil extraction, transportation, and refining for years on end.

[coldtea]

Would it? We transported as much oil in the 70s without "all modern computing". Faxing maybe...

[throwawayjava]

> Would it?

Yes.

> We transported as much oil in the 70s without "all modern computing".

No, we didn't. Global production (and consumption) has close to doubled since 1970.

Also, "is this possible to do without computing?" and "would the sudden disappearance of modern computing seriously interrupt the way that we currently do this?" are very different questions.