Ask HN: What's the minimum needed tech to sustain modern civilization?
The article poses a hypothetical systems design challenge: determining the minimal technology required to sustain a peaceful, equitable human civilization focused on harmony with nature. It envisions a world without greed, crime, money, or personal devices, but still requiring essential services like healthcare, food, shelter, and disaster monitoring. The discussion centers on how to maintain necessary industries like agriculture and pharmaceuticals with simplified, sustainable technology.
- ▪The goal is a civilization living in harmony with nature and other life forms, free of greed, crime, and ownership.
- ▪Essential needs include healthcare, clean water, food, shelter, clothing, and basic transportation.
- ▪Industrial systems for pharmaceuticals, agriculture, and mining would still be required, but ideally simplified and sustainable.
- ▪Spaceflight could potentially be replaced with electric drones and weather balloons for monitoring purposes.
- ▪The proposal eliminates personal technology, organized religion, discrimination, borders, and monetary systems.
Opening excerpt (first ~120 words) tap to expand
I think this is a good systems design problem for HN to nerd out on.There was a recent discussion about how the world is overly complicated. If we could keep it simple from the very beginning, how would we do it?The goal: A civilization of humans living in harmony with fellow life forms. "Looking at the birds, feeling the wind". And since this is all we do, it's safe to assume that greed and crime no longer exist. No organized religion, discrimination, borders. No personal computers/phones. No money, no ownership.To live reasonably, we do need healthcare, shelter, clean water, food, clothing, basic transport. We also need monitoring and warning systems for impending natural disasters.
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Excerpt limited to ~120 words for fair-use compliance. The full article is at Ycombinator.