The lovely thing about this "old knowledge" or "old ways" fetishism is that the knowledge economy is a superset of all previous paradigms.
If you were to ask a blacksmith 400 years ago what he thought about people living in a modern air conditioned house and all the luxuries it affords, with a backyard hobby forge, making steel swords, he would probably be freaking miffed. A hobby?!? Forging stuff for a past time?!? I have to make 20 swords a day or my head gets cut off!
Short of catastrophe, we will not be going back. The future may look different, but the knowledge and technology will continue to improve. If we stop driving cars and stop making cars because we have clean cities with many avenues of public transportation the knowledge of 'how to make a car' still exists.
And there will be some dude in that hypothetical society building a car for a hobby.
If you were to ask a blacksmith 400 years ago what he thought about people living in a modern air conditioned house and all the luxuries it affords, with a backyard hobby forge, making steel swords, he would probably be freaking miffed. A hobby?!? Forging stuff for a past time?!? I have to make 20 swords a day or my head gets cut off!
Short of catastrophe, we will not be going back. The future may look different, but the knowledge and technology will continue to improve. If we stop driving cars and stop making cars because we have clean cities with many avenues of public transportation the knowledge of 'how to make a car' still exists.
And there will be some dude in that hypothetical society building a car for a hobby.