Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Competition is failing us: a horizonal index of entropy indicates how. We must transform social relations toward cooperation. The symptoms of organizational stress alone would justify this, as an ethical route to ecological health and peaceful lives.
A report on the world’s oil depletion problem published several years ago by an obscure association of anonymous consulting engineers and professional project managers is suddenly coming under fierce criticism.
Entropy is an important concept, but it must be correctly understood to be useful. It is no good to use it as an excuse to pander unbridled catastrophism.
We don’t just extract fossil fuels. Instead, whether we intend to or not, we get a lot of other things as well: rising debt, rising pollution, and a more complex economy.
Eventually, our society (as any other society in history) is a dissipative structure.
We’ve all heard it. We think we understand it: entropy is a measure of disorder. Combined with the Second Law of Thermodynamics—that the total entropy of a closed system may never decrease—it seems we have a profound statement that the Universe is destined to become less ordered.
In Douglas Adams’ science fiction series, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, a computer dubbed Deep Thought discovers the "answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything." Here I ponder the answer to the slightly expanded question of life, energy, the universe, and everything.
