A Tale of Two Farms was an interesting read and I enjoyed the perspective that Jared Diamond gave. When learning about the two farms I was surprised to find out that Gardar farm was currently uninhabited and has been so for 500 years, and that the society surrounding the farm has all but ceased to exist. This made me think about why the most technologically advanced farm of its time failed. It also made me wonder if the Huls farm was destined for such failure in the future. Beyond the farms themselves I began to think about society in general and how advanced civilizations have failed in the past. Past civilizations have failed usually as a result of war in which they were outnumbered or in which their strategy was poor. It has only been recently (the past 300 years) that technology could turn the tide on a war. In this sense technology has become a center point in society. However, coming back to the example of the two farms it can been seen that technological advances are not enough to save a society (or in this case farm) from collapse.
This lead me to question the future of America. Jared Diamond did state he was not implying that the Huls farm would fail or that American society would fail as a result of technological advances. To this point I agree. It is not Technology that will be the undoing of advanced societies but rather their dependence on unsustainable technologies which have ever increasing cost as the natural resources are being depleted. It would be unreasonable to deter from technology entirely but rather it would be more practical to make our technology sustainable and this I believe will save our society from collapse in the future.
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