industrial_revolution

Sometimes on this show, we talk about the news. This episode is about the diametric opposite of the news. It’s about thinking deeply about human history and trying to appreciate the awesome length of time and the finitude of our lives. It's an interview with Tim Urban, a blogger at the mind-expanding site Wait But Why, and the author of a new book What’s Our Problem: A Self-Help Book for Societies. If you don’t know Tim and his work, I would sum up his thing this way: Tim is a kind of alien. He has an incredible talent for seeing our world as if from the perspective of a goofy but smart extraterrestrial, who takes not the 30,000-foot view on life, but the 300,000-foot view of life, and history, and human nature. In this show, we talk about … you know what. I'm not even going to try to sum up the hour. Just enjoy. If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at PlainEnglish@Spotify.com. You can find us on TikTok at www.tiktok.com/@plainenglish_ Host: Derek Thompson Guest: Tim Urban Producer: Devon Manze Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

A couple centuries ago, a group of English clothworkers set out to destroy the machines that had been taking their jobs. | Subscribe to our weekly newsletter here.

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Robert is joined by Alison Stevenson to discuss Alfred Krupp.

Footnotes:

1. https://www.amazon.com/Torpedo-Inventing-Military-Industrial-Complex-Britain/dp/0674725263/?tag=saloncom08-20 
2. https://worldcrunch.com/world-affairs/egypt-where-colonialism-meets-military-industrial-complex  
3. https://www.jstor.org/stable/26061939?read-now=1&seq=11#page_scan_tab_contents 
4. https://www.dw.com/en/the-krupp-dynasty-glorified-and-vilified/a-15867835 
5. https://www.aa.com.tr/en/middle-east/ex-army-contractor-vows-to-overthrow-egypts-sisi/1647390 
6. https://www.wired.com/2011/04/0426alfred-krupp-birthday-germany-cannon-king/ 
7. https://salemcc.instructure.com/courses/451/pages/eyewitness-account-of-the-siege-of-paris-1870-71 
8. https://www.amazon.com/Arms-Krupp-Industrial-Dynasty-Germany/dp/0316529400

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So apparently we are due for a fourth industrial revolution, which might come as a surprise to you because as far as most people can tell we have only had one industrial revolution, and some nations haven’t even got around to that one yet.  All the same, this promise of a radical shift in the way we live our lives has got a lot of economists very excited and maybe a little bit anxious, both for very good reasons.  The first industrial revolution, you know the one that we all think is the only industrial revolution was responsible for giving us production.  This production went on to define our way of life in the modern world where people in advanced economies have access to practically unlimited food, robust housing, and bits and bobs to fulfill our every little desire.  The world before this was very stagnant. The idea that we have economic growth at all, where society is always advancing and every generation is richer than the one that came before it is a surprisingly modern ideology.  What’s more, is that it’s not something that we are guaranteed. We can only get so good at making stuff given our current set of technologies and resources, and in fact, we might already be starting to see this plateau.  Arguably the rollout of smartphones that gave us unlimited access to information wherever we were, was the last great paradigm shift in how we lived our lives. 13 years later this technology is improving but it doesn’t offer anything fundamentally different to the way that we live our lives, run our economies or advance our standard of living.  But maybe we are getting ahead of ourselves. To really know what to expect from this supposedly incipient fourth revolution we must first understand a few key things. How do economists define an industrial revolution? What is a revolution and what is just some cool new technology? What were those other two industrial revolutions? What is going to be the fourth industrial revolution? And will this make our modern economies look like the land before steam engines?

Adam Smith was a Scottish philosopher and author who is probably best known for writing a book titled “An Inquiry Into the Nature and Causes of … The Wealth of Nations!” This book effectively marked the beginning of economics as an academic discipline as Adam Amith, (now heralded as the father of economics) laid the foundation for economic rules and principles that guide decision making the world over.

In the summer of 1858, a heatwave dried up the Thames River to a trickle in London. As centuries’ worth of human waste, animal carcasses and other nasty things cooked in the sun, a stench arose that was so horrific it got its own name: The Great Stink.

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Almost getting in a plane crash with Jedward, Why Adam from the Bible was a Cuck, the art of William Hogarth

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Junk food is literally that, empty calories of energy that provide little nutritional value and usually are stored as fat. Yet junk food is irresistible and for good reason - companies spend tens of millions engineering it to be that way.

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