Wicked Fast Change

     We have reached another inflection point for modern man, a turning point that will be beyond our comprehension or imagination.  Change has always happened in population, politics, culture, computing and climate.  Change was originally slow and plodding, almost linear, for the longest of times.  Eons.  Slow population change, for example, caught up with modern medicine, hygiene and science, and then exploded.  The world population in 1800 was 1 billion, until then it had  doubled about every 10,000 years, but then reached 2 billion in 1900 and 8 billion in 2000.  The population of the United States went from 5 million to 75 million to 300 million in that time frame and the population of Utah went from roughly 30,000 to 300,000 to 3 million over that same period.  These are the intrinsic integers, the changes or Delta, that drive the essence of everything we do.  Necessity is the mother. 

    In the 1970’s Alvin Toffler wrote a book called Future Shock indicating that culture change was accelerating exponentially, taking us from the industrial to the information age and beyond, and it was causing stress and disorientation.  My grandfather, for example, was born when there were no cars or airplanes, computers or other galaxies besides our own.  He died after splitting atoms won the war, men walked on the moon and now there are billions of galaxies and alternative quantum universes. Hippies replaced the Flappers and Zoot Suits, skirts got short and hair got longer, peace, love and rock and roll replaced wars, depressions and revolutions.  Malls replaced Main Street and Wall Street replaced Route 66.  Sinatra replaced Rudy Valley and the Beatles replaced Elvis.  The Dead replaced Disco and Taylor Swift replaced Grunge.  Now we have Snoop Dogg doing the Olympics with Martha Stewart, ex-convicts mixing greed with weed.  Politics, they say, follows culture. God help us. 

    The biggest worry in 1900 was that city’s would be 10 feet deep in horse manure by now.  Our biggest worry now is that we won’t have enough electricity to power, or water to cool, our Ai and Bitcoin data centers.  After staring at campfires and the stars for eons, singing, dancing and telling stories, we learned to sit in front of the wireless radio, listening to live national broadcasts on a stand-up radio.  Now we can watch any movie ever made at any time we want on huge, cheap LED TVs.  Jimmy Carter was the fist President born in a hospital and Chuck Yeager was the first man to go faster than sound.  Now presidents are manufactured, not born, and we can go Mach 10.  The 1964 World’s Fair in NYC showed television telephones, self-driving cars and instant micro-wave meals, in their Future-Rama pavilion.  It was the age of the Jetsons.  The future was so bright we had to wear shades.  Then we invented the PC and laptops, Internet and Email, Google and Amazon, Facebook and Twitter, bringing all that computer power to the masses.  Our culture followed with our obsession of the Web, communication, searches, shopping and social media.  Technology provided solutions but compounded our problems with unintended consequences, so the changes became exponential. 

    Now with the advent of General Artificial Intelligence and Quantum Computing we are preparing for change that is faster than linear, geometric or exponential.  We have introduced a change faster change than Factorial and even Tetration where the change of the change is accelerating exponentially.  Remember from school that Linear change is (Y=mX+b) or 2,3,4,5,6,7, while Exponential is (n^X) or 2, 4, 8, 16, 32.  Four Factorial  (n!) is a multiplicative sequence of  4x3x2=24.    Factorial series progression is 2, 6, 24, 120, 720 and 10 factorial is already 3,628,800, getting real big real fast. Tetration succession is iterated exponents of exponents and is 2, 4, 16, 65536, 2^19,728.  Super big, wicked fast.    

    These are the speeds and the capabilities that we will be able to compute with Ai and future Quantum Computers doing everything, all at once, mimicking with algorithms our metaphysical collective energy and interconnected unconsciousness, space-time fabric, DejaVu, kismet, coincidences, life, love and God.  This will be done using photons instead of electrons with no interference, friction, heat, energy or cooling water needs, instantaneously going faster than the speed of light.  Millions-billions-trillions times faster than we have today and almost as fast, and as good, as the human brain.  Hold on to your shorts.

    We will need this computing power to keep up with a population of over 10 billion people, and complex world where all knowledge, history coding and calculations are available to everyone instantaneous.  Imagine; computers coordinating all our personal transport drones in three-dimensional space, freeing up the roads for walking, bikes, gardens and parks.  Or cellular implants and USB ports in your head to connect you to Ai and the world for communication, calculation, data and downloadable memory.  This is not the deconstructionist dream of John and Yoko's imagination, it is the future.

    In the same light there has been an exponential rise in the global temperatures, over 1 degree F^*  a century at first, sneaking up on us since the industrial revolution but really taking off since he 70s.  Drill baby dill.  Now we are close to rising 1 degree a decade, in certain places, during certain seasons, and we are still caught up in denial and inaction.  What is alarming is not the natural cyclical change in weather but the compounding rate of change in the change of the climate, which is unprecedented over the past million years and the last 30 years.  Natural disasters have increased in both frequency and ferocity. The years 2023, 2024, and 2025 now rank as the three highest on record for the number of billion-dollar weather and climate disasters in the United States.  Globally, the number of climate-related disasters has tripled over the last 30. Pay me now or pay me later.

This is the existential change our generation has to face, threatening our individual agency and collective sustainability.   They say that economics also follows culture but we have mostly denied this change because it is inconvenient, especially now.   If we ignore it, knowing it is happening, we will be The Worst Generation guilty of Gross Negligence.  Can this be solved with people, politics, culture or computers?  There is already miserable mass migration and rampant repulsive re-immigration spurred by this change.  The fight for food and water, living space and clean air will lead to conflict and wars between the haves and the have-nots.  The have-nots will shoulder most of the burden of change, as usual.  Water and weather flow towards money.  The haves will gain from it as we privatize profits and socialize climate costs again, as we do in wars, disasters and in fair or free-for-all-trade.  Certain places will become unlivable and maybe our entire planet will become a sweltering hell hole.  The rich and the famous are already looking for ways out on Space X or NASA missions.  

    The question is if we can react and respond with resilience and results for re-enchantment and re-evolution or will we continue to kick the can down the road until it melts.  They say that a change is as good as a rest but we don’t have time to rest.  Change is not resting, its accelerating.  Wicked fast.

Matthew Lindon, PE.  Hydrologist.

Park City, Utah

Waterandwhatever.blogspot.com