the industrial revolution
Do use the industrial revolution as an example, you must look at the entire picture. It started long before automobiles with the invention of the enabling technology of steam engines. To try to match the patterns you need to back up the calendar to about 1830.
I think the pattern to be learned, is that these tornados that we seek are the result of a much larger hurricane pattern that effects multiple existing industries and people at the same time. Going back to the 1830s, the steam engining solved a problem in which mine owners could not get enough people and animals into a mine shaft to provide the heavy lifting power necessary for the job. 1 bowling pin knocked down. The real hurricane began when other companies noticed that while they didn't strickly need a steam engine, they could do their job more quickly and cheaply. All these products had to be shipped by boat to the coast where bigger ships could distribute them. Then a new tornado spawned from the hurricane, the mobile steam engine (railroad). Now location was less of a problem. With companies all over the place there comes a need for better, faster communication. The process fed on itself, since it required engines to get the coal, and transport it to the factories, that made engines. The automobile was really marked the final stage of the hurricane, where motor power, and transportation was available and affordable in the widest possible mass market. Once achieved, the hurricane began to subside. Cars, trains, electric applicances, radios, lawn mowers, steel mills, garment factories, and farms did not change all that much from the time of widespread adoption of engines until the time that computers started to affect these products.
We are in the midst of a new hurricane. It is still roaring and spawning tornados and life is good. Big computers and networks are required to build bigger computers and networks. If there is a lesson to learn from the industrial revolution it is that the winds will eventually die down once some terminal product reaches mass acceptance. I don't know what that will be, I don't think it's happened yet. It took 100 years for the engine based hurricane to run it's course, so I'm not saying it's going to happen soon, but it is a consideration for 10 or 20 years from now.
TP |
