I THINK MINING

The weekend has been snow and more snow.  We cannot get out of the townhouse and to the sights of the city.  And the kids from Iowa cannot get in from Dallas where they are stranded by non-flights.  I spent an extra night in Seattle as the Californians could not leave Long Beach due to planes that could not leave Seattle.  But then, I suspect everyone has their aborted-travel tale to tell this snow-bound time of the  year. 

It would be nice to take this enforced leisure to cogitate on the best mining stories of 2008.  But that somehow seems silly in the present time.  I cannot but avoid the feeling that 2008 will go down as the year that something fundamental changed in the world, or at least the real world.  Something changed about the way the world works in 2008 and we Anglo-Saxons will never view it again with old-fashioned optimism for ever-expanding growth—-at least until the next time.  Many others have seen similar conditions often before, but that was seen by Anglo-Saxons as something that only happened to “them.”

The theory has been in the works every since the Sante Fe Institute began studying complex systems, chaos, and emergent properties.  During this past year I wrote a bit about two of the books that foretold, or at least explain, what has now happened:

• The Origins Of Wealthby Eric Beinhocker
• Beyond Reductionism  by Stuart Kauffman

The third book to read to understand what is happening is Paul Krugman’s Depression Economics. 

None of these three makes for uplifting inspriation, but it sure explains what is happening and why.  The scary thing is that all three emphasize that their is almost nothing we can do to avoid conditions like the present.

So before more snow covers your future, settle down to a long winter read.  Enjoy.

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