Oil influences

I just got done watching A Crude Awakening: The Oil Crash, which is a brilliant reminder of how everything we depend on is oil dependent. In doing so, I want to relate some of the issues that might impact the future of library science.

Some would argue that we have moved out of the industrial age into the information age, but no age has been able to identify itself until the age has passed. I have always been leery of those stating we are in the midst of the information age. The movie does a good job of not stating the age we are in, but in a round about way suggests that we are actually at the end of the industrial age which will crash when the oil supplies run out. And when this happens, civilization that has been built using technology that is steeped in oil will cause a huge crash, and I just don’t mean cars.

The movie talks about how computers, computer chips, agriculture, modern American cities and their development, the population boom, transportation, medicine, electricity, and almost everything produced and sold in the world is a by product of oil. And I don’t just mean in the transportation of these goods. Petroleum products are used to manufacture computers, computer chips and grow agriculture. American cities, with all its roadways and buildings, along with the idea of surburban neighborhoods, depend deeply on oil to operate. The population boom is linked to oil by the process of better agriculture because of the petroleum products used on the farms. Aircraft, ships, cars, and railroads all depend on oil in various forms to operate. Petroleum products are used in medicine and are oil is necessary to explore for the next cure. Electricity is formed by the by product of oil. Anything having some form of plastic in it is an oil product, much less the oil used to transport goods to retailers to buyers. Oil is interconnected in everything we know as an industrialized country. Thus, when oil is gone, the impact will be huge. Some say that we have reached the peak of oil production and we are now going to be on the downward slope and its impacts will begin to be felt. And the steeper the slope, the changes are going to be felt in an endless wave with no relief in sight.

So how does this effect information science? Digitization is a huge focus of library and information science, which depends on computers and computer chips. As we enter the downward slope, less people are going to be able to afford computers, therefore less individuals are going to find information accessible. So, already in the beginning levels of the downward slope, the poor will automatically be left out of information access. Will only the rich with computers be able to access library records and Google books? Then comes in transportation issues. Protocols of interlibrary loans, library consortiums, and the like will be come a thing of the past. Whatever libraries have on hand is the information that can be accessed. This brings up the black hole of digital information; all the information that was ordered online instead of getting a hard copy. Who knows how many decades of information that was received digitally will not be able to be accessed, thus creating a gap of information gained prior to digital formats and those gained after the oil crash. DECADES OF INFORMATION…LOST!

I am not saying that we will go back to card catalogs but I am saying the way we have organized and saved information could be in jeopardy in a shorter amount of time than we think and as far as I know, no library and information science program is dealing with the issue of what is likely to happen when we reach the oil crash, when we have no internet and patrons do not have computers to access information much libraries can’t afford computers to operate the way they have in the past.