Attempt not to Vomit

I’ve been giving some thought to the idea of absolute peaks, points after which the world is never quite the same. In that vein, I’ve been reading about “peak oil.” Peak Oil has been defined (by that ever-faithful bastion of knowledge, Wikipedia) as:

“Peak oil is the point in time when the maximum rate of global petroleum extraction is reached, after which the rate of production enters terminal decline. This concept is based on the observed production rates of individual oil wells, projected reserves and the combined production rate of a field of related oil wells.

In order to understand physical Peak oil, the growing effort for production must be considered. Physical Peak oil occurs earlier, because the overall efforts for production have increased in the past few decades.”

Given the recent shutdown of Megaupload (and a raft of other file hosting services), I’ve begun to consider a sinister possibility. In an age of free access to vast swathes of data, in which we’ve managed to live on the crests of waves in an unimaginably vast infosea, we may already have reached a peak, in terms of access. 

Consider this:

“Peak Porn is the point in time at which the maximum global rate of pornographic downloads is reached, after which the rate of pornography downloads enters a terminal decline. The concept is based on the observed download rates from torrent sites, newsgroups and the combined intake of file sharing services like Megaupload, FileSonic and iFile.it. 

In order to understand physical Peak Porn, the growing effort for the attainment must be considered. Physical Peak Porn occurs later, because the overall efforts for the attainment of pornography have increased dramatically in the past few decades.”

The world we live in is changing, and much as the idea of a diminished capacity for pornography might seem tantalising, we have to consider the effects that the collapse of the industry that allowed us to reach Peak Porn will have, if not on us, on future generations. 

The world is a bleak and scary place, and the future is looking, if anything, bleaker still - scarier still.