The End of Industrial Society

Hum, grumble mumble... We surely are at the end of a cycle in human development terms, witch means the actual society going to change in something new, BUT "Industrial Society" is not actually a society in humans terms.

We have had countless "industrial society" in various different societies, from Japanese steel, China ceramic and shipping (far in the past), metallurgic industry from Celts, Roman industry, cord and weapons industry in more recent times, ... surely "industry" as a concept have changed.

It's still a matter of work in certain location with a certain supply chain to produce a certain (big) amount of goods, in tech terms we have switched various times and now we are about to change from subtractive manufacturing (CNC mills) to additive ones (3D printing) etc such tech change ALSO change more or less the human society but there are still two separate things.

Actual economically-driven, neoliberal society yes completely fails to evolve, because real progress is against certain business, because managerial/profit driven development is incompatible with real innovation, that's an enormous issue of the present time, but again not an "industrial society" issue.

Transportation changes thanks to TLCs and tech evolution, climate change push will probably push us from roads to air/water ways, so a future without major roads and rails infra that demand stability and a certain concentration will probably vanish in a more mixed and flexible ones, the need of big factories will change reducing a bit with tech progress, how we live will change accordingly, but again that's not an industrial society end, nor the actual society end...

It's still probably too early to say when and how such changes happens if they'll happen. There are still too much variables in the game.

And also nutty statements like this:

> Americans and Europeans may at that point be de-facto barred from visiting China by their own governments

...which seems to indicate a lack of familiarity with the relationship between American+European governments and their citizens.

> If this is correct, then post-industrial society isn’t our name for the next stage of civilizational progress. Instead, the term is true in its most literal and pessimistic interpretation: a society after and without industrial civilization. Such a society doesn’t even have the social infrastructure of agricultural civilizations. This means it cannot even mint the preliminary social capital needed to reindustrialize. Likewise, we have lost the implicit knowledge upon which our industrial systems functioned even as recently as a few decades ago. That knowledge cannot be regained absent the people who actually built and understood those systems.

This is an interesting idea: that the shedding of industry by an industrial society is irreversible. There is no way to go back, no matter how desperately that might be desired.

But the reason presented seems kind of flimsy. What does "mint preliminary social capital" mean and why is it impossible after industrialization is abandoned? The idea isn't explained before or after the statement.

You seem to have missed the point of my brief comment. I didn't fail to understand the passage. I understood it and found it implausible.

> its mothers day

Not here it isn't.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mother%27s_Day