Current mood:	content
Current music:	The Cruxshadows - Insomnia

Modern Medieval
Seems my random rambling on LiveJournal has given me an idea for a setting that I can only really describe as "modern medieval" -- but really, it's probably more like cyberpunk with lots of blatantly ripped off borrowed MMO content.

The setting is sometime between the present and the future. Gas and oil reserves have been depleted, and America (if not the world) hasn't really caught onto the whole green/renewable energy thing; the total loss of energy has also crashed the economy, leaving America's/the world's currency basically worthless and sending everyone back to, essentially, gold and/or barter and trade. Scraps of technology remain; most of it is scrapped, some of it is kept as souvenirs and sentimental value; a CD/casette player, a radio, a computer. Batteries, especially those with charge, have become a commodity, especially to those techno-junkies who need at least something electronic in their lives.

Celebrities are no longer the most famous people around; nationwide tours for musicians are unheard of. However, a side effect of this is that more musicians pop up in local areas; they are the modern-day minstrels, singing, writing, telling stories, entertaining for a bit of food or a place to stay (who said it was glorious?). This is the part that stood out most of this setting idea: the idea that many of the old medieval professions would come back, and everyone goes back to those roots where electricity wasn't even a glimmer in the eye of any living soul, giving the earth a chance to recover its energy to be discovered and used again. You would have knights, soldiers, you would have merchants, cooks, smiths, tailors, shoemakers, writers, farmers, anything that doesn't require a machine of some sort.

And people would thrive. Of course, it'd be hard, and you'd see it in the landscape: decrepit and abandoned office buildings, streets and street lights falling into disrepair, many people in the streets or having taken command over someone else's household.

But I think the interesting part of this is that while the major communication-oriented parts of our culture would go away (i.e. no more twitter, Myspace, anything like that), some of the things commonly taken for granted -- music, theatre, the written word -- would persevere even in the face of the entire obliteration of technology. Unfortunately, so would politics, but somehow I think that already-volatile field would have to reform greatly in order to adapt.

This all stemmed from me worrying that computer talents won't be worth that much if and when all the energy goes away. That post is blocked off because there's probably some sort of sensitive information in it. It's probably sort of a valid concern, but at the same time, I also don't see all of this going away anytime soon. It would take something extreme, worldwide, for it to happen all at once. Maybe it won't happen all at once, but it would come out before long that something strange is happening.

I worry too much. :)

I might actually go to bed now, but I felt I should share all that. Later all.