Well, what drives the shifts in what resources define an age?
Accumulation of material reaches a point where more isn’t (currently) valuable.
A new resource replaces uses of an old one.
Improved technology makes a resource much cheaper, and accumulation of wealth and industrial base make production/scarcity of a resource no longer a limiting factor in most cases.
As @Dagon noted, in some sense “information,” once it exists at all, is not scarce, and is already easy to replicate and distribute. But 1) we don’t have all the information we could want, and 2) we don’t (know how to) use it effectively. The former is a matter of research+sensors+any other data collection (solvable through hardware and personnel), the latter is a problem of intelligence/data science/analysis/data access/knowing what we want.
Society is doing...not a great job, but an ok one, recognizing the importance of the former and investing in it. We still kinda suck at the latter which is related to this site’s focus on both AI and alignment, and these seem like a strong candidate for the next limiting factor that could define an age.
Alternatively, that could turn out not to be a big deal (we get AI right, at which point cheap copying and hardware make AI scarcity not a thing). At that point we should have enough know-how to collect enough matter for or needs and continuously process and recycle it into whatever forms we want. It seems like we then go back to energy being the limiting factor in running our machines—securing supply and dissipating waste heat.
Well, what drives the shifts in what resources define an age?
Accumulation of material reaches a point where more isn’t (currently) valuable.
A new resource replaces uses of an old one.
Improved technology makes a resource much cheaper, and accumulation of wealth and industrial base make production/scarcity of a resource no longer a limiting factor in most cases.
As @Dagon noted, in some sense “information,” once it exists at all, is not scarce, and is already easy to replicate and distribute. But 1) we don’t have all the information we could want, and 2) we don’t (know how to) use it effectively. The former is a matter of research+sensors+any other data collection (solvable through hardware and personnel), the latter is a problem of intelligence/data science/analysis/data access/knowing what we want.
Society is doing...not a great job, but an ok one, recognizing the importance of the former and investing in it. We still kinda suck at the latter which is related to this site’s focus on both AI and alignment, and these seem like a strong candidate for the next limiting factor that could define an age.
Alternatively, that could turn out not to be a big deal (we get AI right, at which point cheap copying and hardware make AI scarcity not a thing). At that point we should have enough know-how to collect enough matter for or needs and continuously process and recycle it into whatever forms we want. It seems like we then go back to energy being the limiting factor in running our machines—securing supply and dissipating waste heat.