In the book A Fire Upon the Deep, Vernor Vinge outlines a kind of bleak future for humanity in which societal collapse is inevitable. Despite interstellar commu

In the book A Fire Upon the Deep, Vernor Vinge outlines a kind of bleak future for humanity in which societal collapse is inevitable. Despite interstellar communication and wild technology, there always comes a point at which the machinery of a given society is too complicated and heavy handed and over-fitted to handle some change in circumstances. The result is the survivors are thrown back to pre-industrial society. Of course in his book the machinery of society is more intrinsically enmeshed with high technology—a failure in supply chain could result in a failure of resource allocation or governance.