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It is historically true that energy had been one of the most important factors in the rise of civilizations. It is now quite clear, however, that information, g

It is historically true that energy had been one of the most important factors in the rise of civilizations. It is now quite clear, however, that information, genetic, and AI technologies will likely become the decisive sources of power and influence in the world. Even 'primitive' information technologies like complex language, paper, and the printing press might have played as large a role as energy in history, if not more so. We can argue that scientific knowledge and its spread is the principal key to industrialization. China clearly had sufficient energy sources to invent the modern world; but Europe had the information and institutions to enable it first. Energy will continue to be important but its commodity nature and the rise of renewables mean that it is not the most crucial edge that leading nations can use to outmatch one another.

dredmorbius 10y ago
In my experience, history is a far more robust guide than hand-waved speculation or assertion. China did invent the modern world (mostly), by the way. They just decided not to go the full way, though for reasons not entirely clear. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_and_Civilisation_in_China https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_and_Civilisation_in_... Simon Winchester's biography of that epic work's creator, Joseph Needham, is highly engaging, and also recommended. It's a lighter read than most the other works I've recommended so far: https://www.worldcat.org/title/man-who-loved-china-joseph-needham-and-the-making-of-a-masterpiece/oclc/762172198&referer=space_alien_cat https://www.worldcat.org/title/man-who-loved-china-joseph-ne...
- nopinsight 10y ago
  You appear erudite and very confident in your interpretation of history. So could you explain to us why you assign greater historical importance to energy than information technologies such as paper and the printing press, which amplified and spread the crucial cultural shift towards scientific methods and experimentation? I favor the latter since energy has always been available--We simply lacked the knowledge to harness it efficiently. If I may, I'd like to recommend a couple of books about the present and possible futures of human progress as well: E.O. Wilson. Consilience. https://www.amazon.com/Consilience-Knowledge-Edward-Osborne-Wilson/dp/067976867X https://www.amazon.com/Consilience-Knowledge-Edward-Osborne-... Nick Bostrom. Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies. https://www.amazon.com/Superintelligence-Dangers-Strategies-Nick-Bostrom/dp/0198739834/ https://www.amazon.com/Superintelligence-Dangers-Strategies-...
  - dredmorbius 10y ago
    Well, so long as we're on the China theme, there's the point that China, not Gutenberg, came up with paper, printing, and moveable type. The question of why China didn't take the leap to a fully technical civilisation is ... an interesting one. It's called "The Needham Question" and was essentially what Needham was trying to answer in producing Science and Civilisation. Responses remain ... unsatisfactory. If you're interested in printing and media (a topic I've been exploring in some depth), there's the rate of growth of publishing in Europe. Buringh & van Zanden provide an account of European manuscripts and books from 600 - 1800: Buringh, Eltjo; van Zanden, Jan Luiten (2009), "Charting the "Rise of the West": Manuscripts and Printed Books in Europe, A Long-Term Perspective from the Sixth through Eighteenth Centuries", The Journal of Economic History, 69 (2): 409–445, doi:10.1017/s0022050709000837 From memory, the count in 1400 was roughly 30,000 volumes in all of Europe. That's not titles, that's total instances of all books throughout the continent. By 1500, roughly 200 million, by 1600, ~525m, and nearly 1 billion total books by 1800. Books were still tremendously expensive in the late 18th century. I believe Wealth of Nations sold for about 5L per copy, which was about a quarter of a labourer's annual wage. Four factors had a huge impact in the 19th century: 1. Iron-framed presses. Sturdier and higher-output than a wood press. 2. Cheap pulp paper. I believe this came online in the 1830s. 3. Steam-powered presses. Output increased from on the order of 120 impressions/hour to thousands, then 10,000 by mid-century. 4. Literacy. Books do little good if you cannot read. Increased industrial work had created a demand for functional literacy and universal education amongst the masses. Europe's literacy rates rose from ~25% to 90%+ over the 19th century. The relationship of technology to capability and/or science is ... interesting. Science doesn't always lead technology, and quite often follows it. Thermodynamics is a key example -- it was born of steam engines, and not the other way 'round. (Yes, there are counterexamples.) There's also the early plateau of a great many inventions and innovations: automobile innovation hit a peak in the 1920s (measured by patents, as well as rate-of-performance or -efficiency metrics), aircraft only shortly after. The DC-3 was first produced in 1935 and remains in active service. Robert J. Gordon (Rise and Fall of American Growth) refers to it as "the most perfect aircraft ever built". The development of fossil fuel resources required a bootstrapping process, and as with most such processes, a correct sequencing. Coal begat pumps begat steam pumps begat iron begat railroads begat telegraph begat Bessemer steel and dynamos begat electric motors begat oil drills begat tank cars begat pipelines begat internal combustion engines begat steam turbines begat gas turbines.... (Somewhat out of sequence, though you get the general drift.) The vast majority of all power generation (electrical or traction) still comes from the Otto 4-cycle, Diesel, Parsons-derived steam turbine, or Curtis-derived gas turbine. All of these are 19th century technologies. (Charles Curtis's gas turbine sneaks in just under the wire: 1899.) There's more than just fuel-based engines, to technology, mind. But the "unlimited potential" of Moore's Law exponentiating capabilities are limited to a small subset of mechanisms. I've been trying to construct an ontology of technological mechanisms, earlier work linked below lists 7 elements, I'm now up to nine: 1. Fuels and fuel-based systems. 2. Power transfer and transformation. Shafts, levers, wheels, belts, electricity, magnetism, ... 3. Materials: capabilities enabled by virtue of material properties, and constrained by their limits and abundance. 4. Systemic (scientific) knowledge. 5. Process (technical) knowledge. 6. Organisation: Management of both human and non-human systems: governance, military, religion, law, business, finance, and cybernetics. 7. Network and dendritic structures. Comms, transport, trade, information, and electronic networks. 8. Information: sensing, measurement, processing, storing, and transmitting, through natural or augmented means. 9. "Hygiene". I'm still looking for a good word, but essentially, side-effect, unintended consequence, and negative-outcomes management. Pollution, sink exhaustion, systemic disruption, "bite-back". I'm actively soliciting suggestions or criticisms. I'm familiar with Wilson (love his work) and Bostrom (somewhat less enchanted). https://ello.co/dredmorbius/post/klsjjjzzl9plqxz-ms8nww https://ello.co/dredmorbius/post/klsjjjzzl9plqxz-ms8nww https://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/5h6fgg/seeking_historic_book_publication_or_copyright/ https://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/5h6fgg/seeking...

dredmorbius 10y ago

In my experience, history is a far more robust guide than hand-waved speculation or assertion. China did invent the modern world (mostly), by the way. They just decided not to go the full way, though for reasons not entirely clear. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_and_Civilisation_in_China https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_and_Civilisation_in_... Simon Winchester's biography of that epic work's creator, Joseph Needham, is highly engaging, and also recommended. It's a lighter read than most the other works I've recommended so far: https://www.worldcat.org/title/man-who-loved-china-joseph-needham-and-the-making-of-a-masterpiece/oclc/762172198&referer=space_alien_cat https://www.worldcat.org/title/man-who-loved-china-joseph-ne...

nopinsight 10y ago
You appear erudite and very confident in your interpretation of history. So could you explain to us why you assign greater historical importance to energy than information technologies such as paper and the printing press, which amplified and spread the crucial cultural shift towards scientific methods and experimentation? I favor the latter since energy has always been available--We simply lacked the knowledge to harness it efficiently. If I may, I'd like to recommend a couple of books about the present and possible futures of human progress as well: E.O. Wilson. Consilience. https://www.amazon.com/Consilience-Knowledge-Edward-Osborne-Wilson/dp/067976867X https://www.amazon.com/Consilience-Knowledge-Edward-Osborne-... Nick Bostrom. Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies. https://www.amazon.com/Superintelligence-Dangers-Strategies-Nick-Bostrom/dp/0198739834/ https://www.amazon.com/Superintelligence-Dangers-Strategies-...
- dredmorbius 10y ago
  Well, so long as we're on the China theme, there's the point that China, not Gutenberg, came up with paper, printing, and moveable type. The question of why China didn't take the leap to a fully technical civilisation is ... an interesting one. It's called "The Needham Question" and was essentially what Needham was trying to answer in producing Science and Civilisation. Responses remain ... unsatisfactory. If you're interested in printing and media (a topic I've been exploring in some depth), there's the rate of growth of publishing in Europe. Buringh & van Zanden provide an account of European manuscripts and books from 600 - 1800: Buringh, Eltjo; van Zanden, Jan Luiten (2009), "Charting the "Rise of the West": Manuscripts and Printed Books in Europe, A Long-Term Perspective from the Sixth through Eighteenth Centuries", The Journal of Economic History, 69 (2): 409–445, doi:10.1017/s0022050709000837 From memory, the count in 1400 was roughly 30,000 volumes in all of Europe. That's not titles, that's total instances of all books throughout the continent. By 1500, roughly 200 million, by 1600, ~525m, and nearly 1 billion total books by 1800. Books were still tremendously expensive in the late 18th century. I believe Wealth of Nations sold for about 5L per copy, which was about a quarter of a labourer's annual wage. Four factors had a huge impact in the 19th century: 1. Iron-framed presses. Sturdier and higher-output than a wood press. 2. Cheap pulp paper. I believe this came online in the 1830s. 3. Steam-powered presses. Output increased from on the order of 120 impressions/hour to thousands, then 10,000 by mid-century. 4. Literacy. Books do little good if you cannot read. Increased industrial work had created a demand for functional literacy and universal education amongst the masses. Europe's literacy rates rose from ~25% to 90%+ over the 19th century. The relationship of technology to capability and/or science is ... interesting. Science doesn't always lead technology, and quite often follows it. Thermodynamics is a key example -- it was born of steam engines, and not the other way 'round. (Yes, there are counterexamples.) There's also the early plateau of a great many inventions and innovations: automobile innovation hit a peak in the 1920s (measured by patents, as well as rate-of-performance or -efficiency metrics), aircraft only shortly after. The DC-3 was first produced in 1935 and remains in active service. Robert J. Gordon (Rise and Fall of American Growth) refers to it as "the most perfect aircraft ever built". The development of fossil fuel resources required a bootstrapping process, and as with most such processes, a correct sequencing. Coal begat pumps begat steam pumps begat iron begat railroads begat telegraph begat Bessemer steel and dynamos begat electric motors begat oil drills begat tank cars begat pipelines begat internal combustion engines begat steam turbines begat gas turbines.... (Somewhat out of sequence, though you get the general drift.) The vast majority of all power generation (electrical or traction) still comes from the Otto 4-cycle, Diesel, Parsons-derived steam turbine, or Curtis-derived gas turbine. All of these are 19th century technologies. (Charles Curtis's gas turbine sneaks in just under the wire: 1899.) There's more than just fuel-based engines, to technology, mind. But the "unlimited potential" of Moore's Law exponentiating capabilities are limited to a small subset of mechanisms. I've been trying to construct an ontology of technological mechanisms, earlier work linked below lists 7 elements, I'm now up to nine: 1. Fuels and fuel-based systems. 2. Power transfer and transformation. Shafts, levers, wheels, belts, electricity, magnetism, ... 3. Materials: capabilities enabled by virtue of material properties, and constrained by their limits and abundance. 4. Systemic (scientific) knowledge. 5. Process (technical) knowledge. 6. Organisation: Management of both human and non-human systems: governance, military, religion, law, business, finance, and cybernetics. 7. Network and dendritic structures. Comms, transport, trade, information, and electronic networks. 8. Information: sensing, measurement, processing, storing, and transmitting, through natural or augmented means. 9. "Hygiene". I'm still looking for a good word, but essentially, side-effect, unintended consequence, and negative-outcomes management. Pollution, sink exhaustion, systemic disruption, "bite-back". I'm actively soliciting suggestions or criticisms. I'm familiar with Wilson (love his work) and Bostrom (somewhat less enchanted). https://ello.co/dredmorbius/post/klsjjjzzl9plqxz-ms8nww https://ello.co/dredmorbius/post/klsjjjzzl9plqxz-ms8nww https://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/5h6fgg/seeking_historic_book_publication_or_copyright/ https://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/5h6fgg/seeking...