From Highly Centralized to Highly Decentralized Society

Modern society depends on centralized food and energy production. But distribution is a critical link, vulnerable to natural disasters, devastating pandemics, war, and other events unlikely in the short term but risky to assume will never happen. Then modern society and many millions of people would be in serious trouble.

Present trends foretell a future in which gardening and farming robots will mitigate the brittleness of the food distribution system by enabling highly localized food production, giving new life to suburban population densities. Such bots would enable people to grow much of their own food, organically or any other way they wish, without significant effort. These veggiebots—which are already beginning to be built—would safeguard communities from disruptions in food distribution.

Solar energy is gradually reaching “grid parity” and will localize electricity production, as well. Ultimately, people will save money, and modern society will become much more resilient.