[extropy-chat] technological equilibrium

[Spike]

Occasionally one stumbles over an insight which has
for some time proven elusive, even though the insight
is so obvious it illicits in the suddenly enlightened
the response, "well, DUH!"

I had a well-duh moment this evening.  Since the Long
Now talk by Dr. Jill Tarter, I have been pondering the
question of how an advanced society can ever re-establish
some technological equilibrium.

This disturbed me as a child when I read Asimov's
Foundation.  Here was a technologically advanced society
that was retrogressing, or at least not progressing.
I did not have the vocabulary or grokitudinosity to
understand the singularity then, but even then I had
a hard time imagining an advanced society that was
not moving progressing.  

At Dr. Tarter's lecture, that same question hit me:
intelligence either devours itself, or goes to singularity,
or establishes technological stability somehow.  I could
not imagine how technological stability or equilibrium
could ever come about.

This evening's insight was on why it is I have such
a hard time imagining advance tech equilibrium: on this
planet, every society that is currently in or has ever 
reached technological equilibrium is primitive!

Well, duh.  Obviously.  Has anyone a counterexample?  Has 
anyone a suggestion, or a mechanism for how an advanced 
society can establish pre-singularity technological equilibrium?

spike