• @nexusband
    link
    311 days ago

    Short term, though, would be similar to a collapse of civilization.

    Would it? Civilization doesn’t depend on bleeding edge high tech. Sure, it depends on tech, but look around who’s making ICs or basic processors that are in machine control panels and all the millions of appliances. AMD, Intel, Qualcomm, Broadcom do the “heavy lifting” in terms of monetary value, but in overall quantity? Samsung, SK Hynix, STMicroelectronics, Infineon, Sony, Renesas and NXP are the ones that make the world go round. Infineon is German, NXP is Dutch, Renesas is Japanese, STMicroelectronics is Swiss. The thing that’s really going to hurt is Foxconn, but they are probably global enough to withstand that. There’s also many, many more local players. BOSCH for example has very high capacities for everything up to 80 Nanometers (Pentium 3/4, Athlon 64…)

    Civilization would crack, sure - but i don’t think it would collapse. Society on the other hand…that’s a different paper.

    • @rottingleaf
      link
      211 days ago

      Society on the other hand…that’s a different paper.

      I meant that too. But would actually be interesting, if electronics around us would still be a normal thing, but smartphones changing every year and carelessly used computing power will not. I think it would feel like waking up from a fever dream.

      • @nexusband
        link
        111 days ago

        I mean, “change” per se isn’t necessarily something bad. Meaning, stuff needs to last longer (again) in those cases. Planned Obsolescence is a real thing, that’s however only economical as long as raw materials are relatively cheap. But it would be nice if companies just did that change, instead of being forced in to it…

        • @rottingleaf
          link
          110 days ago

          The issue is - tariffs and regulations already exist and force them the other way in fact. So the matter of purity doesn’t suffer here. Relatively.