One of the interesting effects of advancing technology is a
progressive reduction in economies of scale in many industries and
systems. Some of the bottleneck technologies you note do have some
interesting, if still speculative, alternatives. Railways, for
instance. New proposed systems like SkyTran or Hyperloop have
significantly lower economies of scale than conventional
rail--deliberately so because they find themselves challenged by
political conservatives increasingly resistant to 'big ticket'
infrastructure investments. There have also been small scale
systems overlooked in the conventional urban context, like cable
car systems or, one of my favorites, the 'banana monorail' (
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_mvBDdWJsM ) which has been
experimentally adapted to passenger use in the developing world
context. ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=icXHfnw-gaw ) These
have always looked like a lot of fun to me, and could have
potential space applications as the supports for the cableway can
be designed to be self-supporting and quick-deployable. In
Cambodia there was an aid program to encourage rural development
through the supply of a kind of simple general purpose modular
motor that could be adapted to many uses. One of the ingenious
uses devised by locals was a simple rail car that could be used on
the long-abandoned traditional rail system. Called the 'bamboo
train', these have now become something of a tourist attraction in
themselves. ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ilJAczgfmHk )
Satellites have also started to see hints of competition from new
kinds of lower economy of scale systems, sometimes based on very
old technology revived with new technology. Satellites have long
had a problem of taking so long to deploy--because of their
Faberge Egg mode of development--that they have frequently gone
obsolete before they could pay for themselves. Sometimes as soon
as they have been launched. And so the telecommunications industry
has long been interested in alternatives that had some capability
for continuous upgrade. Space stations proved too expensive for
that, but it has compelled the development of alternatives like
stratospheric airships and aircraft relying on solar power. I long
corresponded with a developer of these, Michael Walden in Las
Vegas. Though more limited in terrestrial footprint, these are so
less costly and risky to deploy that using them in larger numbers
to make up for the difference in coverage is practical, while
offering benefits of much more transmission power, much lower
latency, and much more bandwidth thanks to the potentially larger
payloads and solar power capacity.
Shipping now finds competition, at least in some niches, from
revived sailing vessels, such as the Fair Trade Cruisers which now
travel to the under-served markets of West Africa and South
America. ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EzBKbWL_Mjs ) With the
benefit of new technology, new kinds of sailing vessels based on
technologies like rigid solar wingsails, offer potential to make
this increasingly viable.
I think these things represent a long term trend in the
Post-Industrial era. Industrial demassification is driven by the
shrinking economies of scale afforded by advancing technology--one
of the key factors eroding Industrial Age paradigms from within.
Not saying there won't be a final phase of violence at the last stage of the transition as the most critical remaining centralized stuff changes hands, but it will probably be a lot smaller in scale and with a vastly shifted correlation of forces -- a mopping-up operation against capitalist-state forces that have already been strategically outmaneuvered.And the fewer the bottlenecks, and the less time-sensitive they are (as a result of the increasing availability of expedients like reprogrammable micro-chips, recycling old hardware for functions where lower levels of processing capacity are sufficient, increasing cradle-to-cradle recycling of materials in landfills using local processing facilities like mini-mills, and less dependance on long-distance transportation in general thanks to economic relocalization), the more slack/insulation local economies will have for riding out periods of impasse before they actually have to be restocked from the remaining bottlenecks. That means the bottlenecks, while still remaining, will provide a lot less leverage.But to my mind the most important thing is that the *preponderance* of small-scale means of production for local consumption means a much smaller portion of the economy than in the past, and probably a much smaller portion in the near future than at present, will be critical bottlenecks subject to capitalist control.Railroads are another bottleneck industry.The technologies I'm thinking of are the kinds of open-source micromanufacturing machine tools, smelting furnaces etc. being developed by groups like Open Source Ecology, and tabletop CNC machinery being developed by the open hardware community more generally; open-source machinery like the tractors, compressed earth block machines, sawmills and so forth also being developed by OSE; small-scale intensive food production techniques like Permaculture; and so on.I don't question that there are still many bottleneck technologies that require large scale and capital outlay -- microprocessors probably the most significant.
I don't think electrical power generation is so much -- generating capability can be pretty well dispersed. And if photovoltaic generators still require larger, more capital-intensive facilities to produce, other kinds of renewable power -- wind, or using solar reflectors as heat source for a steam-powered generator -- are producible at the local level. I may be wrong -- I'm a layman on computer hardware issues -- but I think the hosting capability of server farms can be pretty widely distributed among many small facilities over a large area.
-- Eric Hunting erichunting@gmail.com