“There were firm ceilings on the amount of energy that the first two sources, foraging and farming, could provide. For foraging, the ceiling was a little under 10,000 kilocalories per person per day, and for farming, a little over 30,000 (these energy budgets had to cover not just food, by the way, but also fuel, shelter, clothing, and everything else that people do). Contemporary Americans consume on average about 230,000 kilocalories per day, most of it turned into electricity to power our machines. We do not know — yet — if there is also a hard ceiling over what is possible in fossil fuel societies, but the implication of history seems to be that there is.”

“Today I hope to persuade you that the same thing that happened to aviation is happening with the Internet. Here we are, fifty years into the computer revolution, at what feels like our moment of greatest progress. The outlines of the future are clear, and oh boy is it futuristic. But we’re running into physical and economic barriers that aren’t worth crossing. We’re starting to see that putting everything online has real and troubling social costs. And the devices we use are becoming ‘good enough’, to the point where we can focus on making them cheaper, more efficient, and accessible to everyone. So despite appearances, despite the feeling that things are accelerating and changing faster than ever, I want to make the shocking prediction that the Internet of 2060 is going to look recognizably the same as the Internet today.”