[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.

[coldtea]

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

Doubled is not that much to cover.

Besides did it double because of increased demand (more population, more developing nations, etc) and efficiencies in drilling (e.g. fracking or how it's called), or because of "modern computing"?