THE FUTURE: minimal

The trends in miniaturization that have characterized the information revolution are seeing themselves extended into all other social and cultural realms. The future that is being constructed all around us will, without a doubt, be minimal.
What do we mean by the term minimal? Well, first of all, we can use it to characterize a social order and structure predicated on a set of values that are much more personalized, or individualized, than they currently are today. This is also to distinguish it from our present situation, which can accurately be termed maximal, or conglomeratory.
This is the trend by which all things- power, resources, finance, energy, governance, commerce- are clumped into ever larger disconcerned bureaucratic monoliths, driven by a limited set of antihuman and unsustainable goals.
The maximal pursues ownership at the exclusion of stewardship. It embodies concentration rather than decentralization, and it threatens both humanity and nature with its blind ambitions. Conversely, the minimal represents the only truly sustainable alternative open to humankind, and it is a set of principles or values by which any future society must organize itself if it wishes to survive.

Looking at the research of the last few decades we can see quite clearly that the era of the maximal is rushing headlong to its potentially catastrophic conclusion. On the most basic level, there are simply no more sources of ‘big’ energy left capable of sustaining our current levels of consumption, to say nothing of the accelerating energy demands of rapidly industrializing nations such as China and India.
And yet, there is no energy shortage once we flip our perspective and embrace the minimal. Indeed, then we see that we are awash in hundreds of different forms of simple, ‘small’ sources of energy and power, from photovoltaic inks to micro wind turbines to recapturing lost kinetic energy every time we take a step. Are these sources enough to sustain a decent standard of living for everyone? Absolutely! Are they sufficient to maintain an indulgeant, wasteful, overconsumptive economy? Not in a million years.
This is where a change is needed. We must stop and reexamine our genuine needs, and frame all our questions of energy into these new terms. How much of what we do is necessary, how much simply used to propel endlessly forward the disasterous fiction of the ‘economy’?
In the minimal future we will all be on a low-energy diet, utilizing a tiny fraction of what today for us seems normal. Doing this will emphatically not require us to abandon the genuine comforts of a modern life- it will simply mean designing our culture to operate on a much smaller scale.
What does this mean, practically speaking?
Well, for one thing, our technologies, those objects and systems that we use in day to day life, will have to become more democratic (open-source), both in terms of their use and their production.
Things will no longer be made in massive, energy-hungry indistrialized factories, but rather rapidly prototyped at their point of use- digitally manufactured through energy and materially minimal additive processes by individuals and small communities.
Likewise, social organization will become decentralized and localized as the burdens of nation-states become too heavy to bear.
The buildings we live and work in will become smaller, efficient, core-oriented modular systems, expanded only as need dictates, rather than built large and artificially filled.
Communication and computing devices will become both mobile and distributed- the days of clunky desktop computing boxes over.
It is not difficult to imagine that in a low-energy minimal world our devices will demonstrate contact-cumulative properties. That is, any two low-imput devices, when brought into proximity with each other, will automatically double their respective capacities. The more units brought together the greater the possibilities. This in itself would act as a great motivator for individuals to form affiliate networks in order to collectively perform taks and solve problems.

These are just some of the radical shifts that will be needed, and in fact are occuring right now.
Finally, some quick thoughts about infrastructure in the minimal future.
If we look at our heavily indistrialized maximal society today, we see that all of its outcomes are predicated on a strongly developed infrastructure of roads, ports, sewers, power grids, etc. All of these things, by their nature as maximal systems, have become survival liabilities as we rush headlong into a low-energy future. And yet, what alternatives are there that would allow us to maintain a globally connected world? When we examine the word infrastructure itself we see that its prefix comes from the latin infra, meaning under, or below. Infrastructure acts as the foundation of a rigid, inflexible culture. We should instead be looking at organizational solutions in terms of their intrastructure capabilities- meaning that which exists within, or between individuals or communities.
Wireless networks are to the present what roadless transportation lines will be to the furture. Light, high-speed rail service, even intercontinentally, would be a much better use of our remaining maximally driven expenditures than proping up antiquated roadways or polluting air freight.
As social organization becomes more decentralized and returns to its community oriented past, the collosal infrastructure of today will give way to an intrastructure based on the principles briefly outlined here.

One thing is certain, whether we like it or not, the future will be minimal. The only thing left to decide is how many of us will survive to enjoy it.