Is Digitization Catastrophic for Civilization?

I want to thank all the readers who reached out to me during the past several days as I took a leave of absence to do an extended fast to concentrate on my health and get my instructions from the Lord as to what I needed to focus on in 2025 under a second Trump presidency. I plan to begin writing again this week, and am already preparing an article I hope to publish tomorrow on inauguration day, or shortly thereafter. In the meantime, I am republishing an excellent article published this weekend from Charles Hugh Smith of Of Two Minds: Is Digitization Catastrophic for Civilization? A common-sense, practical case can be made for "yes." The fundamental dynamics of any civilization are 1) the quantity / scale of resources available to support the civilization and 2) how are those resources invested / consumed. As a generalization, the analog world lends itself to durability in a number of critical ways. The possibility that using resources for things that must constantly be replaced could deplete the affordable resources at the scale necessary to constantly replace everything doesn't register in a "no limits" world. But this "no limits" world isn't the real world, it's a fantasy world constructed of modern mythologies. The real world is inherently limited in a number of ways. Consider the resource footprint of a modern digitally-dependent appliance that only lasts five years, compared to an analog appliance that lasted 50 years. The modern system is egregiously wasteful of resources, as recycling the nine superfluous appliances is also energy-intensive; it's not "free." On the present course, we may find that we squandered irreplaceable (in terms of cost) resources in a misguided focus on short-term profits reaped by replacing everything under the sun every few years. A future littered with failed digitally dependent products that we no longer have the means to replace would be a catastrophe, and common-sense practicality discerns no other possible outcome.