After the Mad Max-like apocalypse do you think that civilization is capable of a Mulligan?

[MrScorpio]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Road

How long would it take for the planet to get back to at least an equivalent of 20th century society?

I think that we would have to have an equivalent of 19th century technology in order create something akin to the Industrial Revolution, in order to rebuild civilization.

That is, if Moore's Law doesn't get us first.

Then we're really hosed.

[ChairmanAgnostic]

1. There will be pockets of stored knowledge

encyclopedias, CDs, DVDs, conputers, seed banks, tech centers, that will survive, even thrive. Maybe.

[MrScorpio]

2. But one would need a functional electrical grid in order to access the info, right?

An intact library of regular old books and manuals would be much more practical in such a scenario.

[ChairmanAgnostic]

7. People, having found how useful pushing electrons around can be, will

never forget how to generate it, even on a local basis. screw the grid. Prepare for local generation.

[pocoloco]

8. Like the one in Alexandria??

[Soylent Brice]

3. Moore's Law will be replaced with the Law of Accelerating Returns.

we won't have a mad max style apocalypse. the human race will be unrecognizable by the end of this century, but only because intelligent machines will be so similar to us.

[MrScorpio]

4. That is in the absence of some sort of catastrophe

Like some global climate disaster, complete economic collapse, a Third World War or a comet strike.

And to what extent would the new intelligent machine dynamic extend from the highest levels of the elite class down towards the less advantaged?

Would it be possible for the Third World to benefit the machines, despite the preponderance of cheap and unskilled labor at that level?

[Soylent Brice]

9. natural catastrophe would be out of our control, to an extent.

and to answer this:

"And to what extent would the new intelligent machine dynamic extend from the highest levels of the elite class down towards the less advantaged?"

neural nets and implants will be just as readily available to less advantaged than they would be to the elite.

just like cell phones and PCs were originally thought to be available only to the elite, future technologies will continue to shatter that myth.

if you look at labor from an technological evolutionary standpoint, jobs that are available will continue to shift from manual labored positions to those that require more education. it's been accelerating, and trending this way, since the industrial revolution. once nueral implants are available imagine being able to download information from the world wide web directly into your brain.

read any book by Ray Kurzweil. the Singularity is here.

[Richard D]

5. There can be no recovery as we now have it.

Our civilization started because of easily accessible minerals and natural resources. everything is built upon the past. No easily accessible minerals, no beginning of the march of civilization. Machines that make machines, in other words. The process for extracting minerals that is necessary today could never be possible in a non-industrial post-apocalyptic society. We blow it, it's done.

[MrScorpio]

6. That's a great answer

We've pretty much squandered the natural resources and minerals at this point.