Post Peak Jobs?

Jack · Dark Lord Joined: Aug 11, 2004 Posts: 5088

Ideal trades? Locksmith and plumber would be right up there.

schajw · Tar Sands Joined: Sep 07, 2004 Posts: 26 Location: Unknown

I wonder how many will choose this one:

gg3 · Posted: Fri Sep 24, 2004 10:22 pm Post subject:

Jack's quite right about locksmith and plumber.

In fact, anyone who's planning to install themselves as an emperor or suchlike, is in for a surprise if s/he doesn't have a vote of confidence from the plumbers.

And for that matter, anyone who's planning to be the kind of emperor who treats his/her people like serfs, is in for a surprise. Solidarity among the trades.

This leads us to another post-crash occupation: union organizer.

johnmarkos · Posted: Sat Sep 25, 2004 3:43 am Post subject: What about . . .

network administrator? Before you laugh me off the thread, let me explain a bit. I imagine that people are still going to want to have their computers around. Electricity use is an 18th century technology . . . it's not like it's totally going away, even if the grid does collapse. We can certainly get enough juice to power a few laptops, even with that windmill. We had the POTS in the 19th century . . . it'll probably still be around through the 21st. In fact, that reminds me of another possibility. Telephone operator! If we don't have any more Intels and AMDs, we're not going to want to waste our precious computers by using them as telephone switches when a person can do the job just as well.

Just trying to promote the idea that a low-power future need not be totally unwired. I mean, just because you can't push a 3000 pound vehicle around at 60 MPH doesn't mean you can't boot up your laptop.

gg3 · Posted: Sun Sep 26, 2004 5:15 am Post subject:

Hi Johnmarkos!

Network admin: yes. Computers still made: yes. Internet still operational: yes. Most of the public communications networks will still be around, plus or minus economic shakeouts and higher prices due to energy cost passthroughs (including the embodied energy in the equipment and carrier facilities).

Telephone operator: I'm a telephone systems engineer, and I can tell you with 100% certainty that we're not going to go back to manual switching for the public network. Automatic switching (the original step-by-step system, 1898) was developed by the non-Bell operating companies originally for use in exchanges too remote or small to justify hiring operators (lots of historic detail omitted here to save space, else I could write ten pages on this subject). The Bell System had to license the patents, so originally they resisted mightily. (Bell eventually developed the "panel dial" system, but IMHO that was a truly crappy substitute; Ericsson developed the crossbar switch, which was a major leap forward, and eventually everyone licensed the crossbar patents and then developed their own versions.)

However, it soon became clear (mid 1920s) that growth in demand for telephone service at that time was so high it would be impossible to hire enough operators to do the work. The projection was that by 1960, you'd need half the adult population working as operators to handle the traffic load. Most of the USA was on dial systems by 1960, and the few remaining manual exchanges were gone by the end of the 1970s.

Dial equipment even in those days used remarkably little energy. Today it uses even less. Your telephone consumes 2.5 watts when off the hook (in conversation), but a modern digital PBX phone consumes virtually none. In PBX systems, a 100-station system that took 1,000 watts in the mid 1980s now takes about 140 watts with current technology. Add another 120 watts for a central voicemail system, which is far less than 100 stations each having an answering machine (15 watts each).

As far as conserving precious CPUs is concerned, that's an incorrect assumption and a red herring. The central telephone switch has a CPU and a bunch of subordinate processors, but *so what*? If CPUs become that scarce, we're on our way back to the caves.

There is a valid role for the old manual switchboard. In an intentional community, it can serve as a last-ditch backup to the digital PBX. In the event the PBX dies of a lightning strike, the manual switchboard can take over until replacement parts are found. Also the switchboard can be run from a truly minimal power supply (easily recharged by pedal powered generator, presumably this gives the operator a bit of exercise during the long hours at the switchboard!), in the event your main power supplies (e.g. PVs, wind turbines, micro-hydro) all fail to the degree where you only have enough to run a central refrigerator and everything else has to be turned off.

In any case, if your community can produce enough electricity to run its main network server (presumably a Linux box built with the most efficient hardware you can find), it can generate enough to run a telephone switch and voicemail system.

To which I'll add, our community will be quite well provided-for in this regard.

johnmarkos · Posted: Sun Sep 26, 2004 11:29 am Post subject:

> The projection was that by 1960, you'd need half the adult
> population working as operators to handle the traffic load.

Wow -- that's a hilarious image!

Thanks for the great post. I'm a computer programmer and data miner for scientific applications (used to be bioinformatics, now fighting spam). I'm slowly expanding my career into the general area of complex systems research and development. This seems to me to be a viable career for a future in which more and more complex systems come under attack (as the mail system does today). I have a hard time imagining a future in which there aren't computers to program and play with. The idea of everyone going all medieval and becoming blacksmiths or farmers or alchemists or monks or whatever sounds incredibly boring to me. :)

John

gg3 · Posted: Mon Sep 27, 2004 5:20 am Post subject:

Ahh, but minus all the urban street-lighting flooding the sky, you can still do *astronomy*! After all, people did astronomy when they had nothing to work with other than large hunks of stone set in careful alignments for use as observing positions.

And you can still do *mathematics*. Which gets us theoretical physics. And there will be plenty of opportunities for psych & soc research as well. So whether you're into the physical sciences or the human sciences, the curious mind will still have plenty of fertile ground to explore.

Complex systems analysis could get you a job at Fort Meade if you were willing to sign something saying you won't talk about your job with your outside friends!:-). And you can be sure those guys will be fed & housed well. Largest concentration of math PhDs on earth, by the way.

As far as medieval jobs being boring, give yourself more credit where credit is due. Imagination is an unlimited resource; curiosity and creativity are unlimited resources; love is an unlimited resource. These things do not depend on modern tech, they depend on individual and collective temperament (within reason: a starving person has little room for reflecting on larger issues).

Humans are remarkably homeostatic: the individual's emotional spectrum adapts itself to prevailing circumstances (by analogy think of an audio system with automatic gain control & compression). Boredom only means you're not getting enough exercise of the imagination muscles. A creative person will always find a way to engage. A depressed person will always find a rationale for depression.

It's an interesting exercise to ennumerate one's actual needs that are preconditions to being capable of being creatively engaged & productive. The list will typically include a certain set of basics that are similar for all humans, some add-ons that are culturally based, and some personal add-ons. Some of the latter may seem silly to others, but for accuracy they should be included.

Usually these things come down to: the material circumstances to assure a lack of physical distress, the presence of friends/family who are reliable allies, the means of making a viable contribution to the lives of those around oneself, a means by which to engage oneself with a sense of meaning in something larger than oneself; and a few minor personal items that, strictly speaking, are luxuries but allowable. In any case, with a bit of ingenuity, these conditions are usually fairly easy to achieve even in a reduced-technology or other decline & fall scenario.

kochevnik · Intermediate Crude Joined: Aug 20, 2004 Posts: 881