Comment by archargelod

Joy.

> our civilization will collapse

Well, we are heading for 2º C global warming by 2040, possibly by 2030. And the IPCC and others already pointed out that 2º means the end of civilisation.

So, it's coming anyway... but it's the nature of human fsck-ups that they come in clusters. That's why someone coined the term "clusterfsck".

So, we have multiple human fsckups coming along all together in the mid-2020s, just as we did in the mid-1930s.

Sketchy off the cuff chronology:

* Cheap COTS x86 hardware gets good enough to run free OSes from academia (good)

* Virtualisation forcibly brought to x86 in defiance of Popek and Goldberg (good)

* Broadband everywhere (good)

Result:

* Mainstream acceptance of FOSS (good)

Result:

* Cheap mass cloud computing (bad)

Side-effect: financial crisis -- the dot-com crash

Time passes. International travel gets cheaper. Internet facilitates global trade, globalisation, and awareness of inequalities. Only now you can afford to get there.

Some recovery, new internet startups.

Result:

* Free mass pesudonymous social media (bad)

Result:

* Weak poor post-communist régimes spread disinformation online in bulk

* Cryptocurrencies: imaginary internet money that destroys the climate, facilitates crime, destabilises financial systems

Result:

* International agreements weakened (NATO, EU, global finance, etc.)

* Another financial crisis

Same time:

* Really large scale cloud computing

* Cheaper travel facilitates a pandemic

* More money for internet and cloud companies

Result

* LLMs -- mechanically-recovered text extruders

* More, better disinformation; further geopolitical instability

Next:

* Mass scale climate collapse renders large countries and continents uninhabitable

* Kills cheap hi-tech factories

* Collapse of bot-slop poisoned tech industry

Result:

War.