… the 20th century saw a nearly 40-fold gain in useful energy [i.e. energy available for human use]; since 1800 the gain was about 3,500-fold.… Read More »Technology (26): Vaclav Smil on available energy per capita since 1800
Extrasomatic: outside of the body About 10 millennia ago… the first patches of deliberately cultivated plants as a small share of the Earth’s total photosynthesis… Read More »Technology (25): Vaclav Smil on prime movers and extrasomatic energy
Hattip: Brink Lindsey Let us, for the sake of argument, suppose that a hundred years hence we are all of us, on the average, eight… Read More »Technology (24): Keynes on The Permanent Problem; or, The Dread of Abundance
Recommended by OpenCulture.org, via HN. See also: Writing and Reading as Technology (1): Transforming Fire; Slow BurnWriting and Reading as Technology (2): Half-baked BeginningsWriting and… Read More »Writing and Reading as Technology (15): videos on the evolution of the alphabet and the spread of writing
Hat tip: HNWith apologies to subscribers who received post 14 of this series out of order due to my enthusiasm for the subject matter… …… Read More »Writing and Reading as Technology (13): Erik Engheim on Gutenberg vs earlier Asian printing technologies
We often have convenience now because someone did the maths before. Ben Sparks With apologies to subscribers who received this out of order due to… Read More »Writing and Reading as Technology (14): Magical Paper Sizes; or, The Golden Non-Ratio
Here’s Eisenstein again. There’s a lot at work: The combinatorial innovation that was the printing press created further opportunities for cross-pollination by breaking down old… Read More »Technology (23): Elizabeth Eisenstein on how the printing press created new networks and sparked further innovation
I’m working my way through Elizabeth Eisenstein’s excellent The Printing Revolution in Early Modern Europe, an abridged version of her two-volume The Printing Press as… Read More »Writing and Reading as Technology (12): Elizabeth Eisenstein on How the Printing Press Changed Books
CX. There are, moreover, some inventions which render it probable that men may pass and hurry over the most noble discoveries which lie immediately before… Read More »Technology (22): Francis Bacon on Combinatorial Innovation, the Big Three Technologies of the Renaissance, and Pure Science
The technology of writing isn’t simply the infrastructure of thought: it’s the enabling infrastructure of most of the complex activities we think of as government.… Read More »Writing and Reading as Technology (11): Writing Rules