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"Industrial scale" as in mechanized, formalized processes and world-spanning supply chains. The stone age (as well as the bronze age) ended because the supply
by otabdeveloper4 2y ago
"Industrial scale" as in mechanized, formalized processes and world-spanning supply chains.
The stone age (as well as the bronze age) ended because the supply chains that spanned continents started to be untenable and something new needed to be done.
Our mental model is wrong - industrial processes and global supply chains are not a recent invention. In fact, these things are some of the first things homo sapiens invented. (Many millennia before agriculture or the wheel, for example.)
Homo sapiens has always been "modern", whatever characterizes our society isn't that.
- kortilla 2y agoMechanized how though? I don’t think a few cases of water or wind mills turning things meaningfully moves the needle. And it’s definitely not “a formalized process” because those existed long before the qualitative change that came with the Industrial Revolution, which was significant energy expansion into basically every industry, especially transportation. Moving away from depending on animals to move goods outside of waterways dramatically shifted the entire world because it completely changed what was viable (cities of any significant size off of water ways).