Enter: the Box
Posted: 2016-02-21 05:18pm
I've had this idea kicking around my head lately, based on the premise I'll quote below. The idea would be to play out the scenario using a series of vignettes, in the same kind of vein as Surlethe's "Global Mean Temperature". This scenario, though -- uncoupling humanity from its need to generate energy -- would have a more optimistic ending, though of course there would be some bumps along the way.
I post this here and now for a couple of reasons. First, I thought that there might be some interest. Second, I hoped that there might be some feedback/suggestions/corrections from people here whose knowledge of some of the topics will certainly exceed my own. For example, while I can foresee that the petro-states will have to take some extreme actions if energy starts being essentially free, I don't have the geopolitical chops to game out exactly what those are, so my take would be superficial.
Also, there is an "end game" already in mind, or rather, two or maybe three of them; I just haven't decided yet which it will be, and right now it isn't very important.
So, what do we think?
I post this here and now for a couple of reasons. First, I thought that there might be some interest. Second, I hoped that there might be some feedback/suggestions/corrections from people here whose knowledge of some of the topics will certainly exceed my own. For example, while I can foresee that the petro-states will have to take some extreme actions if energy starts being essentially free, I don't have the geopolitical chops to game out exactly what those are, so my take would be superficial.
Also, there is an "end game" already in mind, or rather, two or maybe three of them; I just haven't decided yet which it will be, and right now it isn't very important.
So, what do we think?
The premise wrote:Every so often, an invention changes the world. It's happened a million times already: someone makes a critical improvement on an existing technology, and boom, the world changes forever. It's the way it always happens.
Except for the most important invention in the history of the world. No one invented the Box, or at least, no one could ever figure out who did. One day it just appeared on several tech discussion groups, in the form of a document with complete schematics and instructions for its mass production. Attempts were made to try and track down whoever was responsible for uploading it in the first place, but its inventor remained a complete mystery.
Once they realized what the Box could do, the big corporations tried to monopolize it. Legally, they didn’t have a leg to stand on – not that that ever stopped them before – and when it turned out that almost anyone could crank them out in their garage, it wasn’t even worth the trouble to try to keep the genie in the bottle. It would take all of their resources just to remain relevant.
Before very long, you could buy your own Box for the cost of a tank of gas. And then you wouldn’t really need the gas anymore, because the Box was, simply put, a ten kilowatt electrical generator. It never needed any fuel, or maintenance, and it would run forever. No one could ever say why, either; the world’s foremost physicists and engineers declared that the Box couldn’t possibly work, but they could not deny that it worked anyway.
And of course, it changed the world.