I recently watched this Vice documentary and found myself quite captivated by the ideas presented by Jeremy Rifkin:
Let me know what you think Steemians!:
Jeremy Rifkin makes the argument that the economic infrastructure of the 20th Century, based on second industrial revolution technology, has become unsustainable in the 21st Century and will soon be catastrophic for humanity and the biosphere.
I found his approach rather balanced. He acknowledges the importance of decentralization of energy systems, internet and economies, something I'm all for. I also like the idea of a Biospheric Consciousness, the idea that our abstract mechanistic models of economics, as well as our egocentric and ethnocentric worldviews will shift to a consciousness that is centered on the natural biological order.
What I'm critical of is the "Internet of Things" he promotes. I think currently this is just an excuse for people to consume more and more and bring more and more gadgetry into the households, making our consumption ever more energy exhaustive. We see the trends in electronics currently creating more and more frequent planned obsolescence. There is also the question of who manages the data that is so important in these systems and what conclusions are made from the analysis of this data. Is the Internet of Things really going to help scale back our energy exhaustive cultural patterns or are they just going to make it more convenient to do so?
I look forward to your thoughts.
PS. In the documentary he discusses climate change and presents some very good arguments that our current economic systems, based on fossil fuel dependence and heavy meat consumption, are rapidly affecting the water cycles. It's hard to deny that we are destroying the biosphere, but I invite any climate skeptics out there to convince me that we are not massively upsetting a biospheric order.