But communications will decline. Pen and paper will become the new "normal".
Pen, paper, and physical transport of written communications are much less energy and resource efficient.
No, they are not perishable, but the point isn't about perishables, it's the expense to ship those products around the world. Of course perishable goods are even worse in that regard, but non perishables count as well.
Okay, well if the point is not about perishables, then perhaps talking about salad in relation to cost issues of bulk shipping of goods does not usefully add to the conversation. I'm not sure why you keep bringing it up.
As I mentioned before, some perishable foods can be made less perishable by irradiation. This also goes a long way toward replacing refrigeration without compromising food safety. I expect you'll be completely in favor of that, right? Think of the children.
But how much will this "Greater" cost be?
A small multiple of the current cost, as I said. Probably about 2.5x. Certainly more affordable, safer, more convenient, and more effective than using candles or whale oil.
Why wouldn't we just use candle wax?
Because candle wax (of any variety) is fuel, a scarce resource in your scenario. You can burn it to get a little bit of flickery yellow light from a candle flame for a short time, or you can use it to manufacture a hand-cranked dynamo, some capacitors, and some LEDs and get available steady white light for a long time.
(First paper, now candles... you have some very environmentally extravagant and wasteful proclivities. Next thing you'll be wanting to ride horses instead of using a bicycle.)
How would that be helpful?
Is that question serious? You're asking how technologies that preserve knowledge help preserve knowledge?
I think you're underestimating how much the Romans accomplished.
In science and medicine, no I'm not. Fortunately they held onto some of the knowledge they got from the Greeks and other conquered subjects, and even allowed some progress in mathematics to continue (mostly in Alexandria).
Except for some surgical knowledge (stemming bleeding, setting broken bones and so forth) acquired by experience on the battlefield, Roman medicine was as worthless as any other medicine of the time (or for millennia after). As far as preventing or treating infectious disease was concerned, access to the most advanced Roman medical knowledge in the Empire would have been more likely to do you harm than good.
And yet, they still exhausted their resource base which led to their collapse. Interesting..
They were very strong militarily, and so exhausted their "resource base" of easily conquerable neighbors. Or so the article you cited speculates.
It also claims, without citing a single historical document or archaeological finding in support, that erosion or depletion of farm land was a significant factor, while admitting that historical sources state otherwise, that the arable land available exceeded the labor supply to work it.
Resource exhaustion in the environmental sense remains an unproven and unlikely hypothesis as an explanation for the fall of Rome.
Maybe not, but it's not likely without massive infrastructure to retain our medical and scientific knowledge. Maybe if we had a class of hermit monks who took vows of poverty and sole mission in life was to retain that knowledge. But we don't have that anymore...
There are no monks anymore? That's strange, I could swear that there are some I talk to and visit several times per week on matters of mutual interest, who have in fact taken vows of poverty and whose sole mission in life is to help the needy.
Preserving knowledge doesn't really require their attention at present, but if the need should arise, I expect many people (not just monks of course) to take on that mission. Everyone except the most depraved illiterate barbarians understands that knowledge is valuable.
A kilobyte is a page. A megabyte is a book. A gigabyte is a library. Speaking as someone who might very well put high value on retaining knowledge, I can carry one or two hundred gigabytes in my pocket without making a bulge. The electronics needed to read that data is not particularly complex, and suitable devices for it (many of them small and low-power) already exist by the millions. So, what "massive infrastructure" is required?
So, if they really want that Dark Age, those Druidic book-burning chip-burning death squads are going to have to work hard for it. Good luck finding all the copies. Us knowledge-loving hermit monks learned not to put all our eggs in one basket, back in Alexandria.
Respectfully,
Myriad
