> [!NOTE]+ Meta > Author:: Lewis Dartnell > Reference:: Dartnell, L. (2014). *The Knowledge: How to Rebuild Our World from Scratch*. Bodley Head. > Date:: 2014 > Tags:: #warp/book #UK > WeftLinks:: > - [[Psychological value of craft]] > - [[Disaster recovery value of craft]] > Claim:: > - [[Claim - Craft helps us cope with the impact of artificial intelligence]] > [!SUMMARY] Summary > A thought experiment on rebuilding civilisation after collapse shows how dependent we have become on complex systems and how few of us retain basic practical skills. ### Highlights Astrobiologist Lewis Dartnell imagines a world where civilisation has collapsed, whether through pandemic, asteroid strike or nuclear war, and asks what knowledge survivors would need to reboot it. The book works through the fundamentals: agriculture, food preservation, materials, medicine, energy and communication. Its starting premise is that most people in the developed world lack the basic skills to survive, let alone rebuild, if the complex systems that support them were to fail. Dartnell laments modern over-specialisation and argues that our collective knowledge is distributed across a population that individually knows very little about how its world is made. The book does not address AI, but its argument applies directly. As AI absorbs more cognitive and practical tasks, the skills held in human hands become thinner. Craft knowledge such as working wood, spinning fibre, firing clay or forging metal is the kind of capacity that would matter when sophisticated systems fail.