consumption

Schalk
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Recap: Mastering Technology Revolutions

Last week, we discussed the double-edged sword of technology: very powerful, but also very dangerous. 

Mastering technology means you’ve learned how to tap it for all it’s worth, without getting burned by its long list of dangers. 

This week’s posts applied this philosophy to our four main technology revolutions.

The checklist

  • Agricultural revolution
    • Be grateful for food abundance and use the incredible nutritional variety at our disposal. 
    • Manage the wastefulness of unhealthy food, and cut down animal products to reduce environmental impact. 
  • Industrial revolution
    • Make sure your stuff is useful (i.e. used naturally at least once per month).
    • Invest diligently in that precious intangible asset of life efficiency. 
  • Techno-scientific revolution
    • Be a responsible consumer to help nudge technological progress in the right direction. 
    • Be a responsible influencer and voter to shape how society uses the power of science.  
  • Digital revolution
    • See your consumption of digital information as food for your mind. 
    • Know what kinds of information are good, bad, and useless. 

Technology has elevated humanity to the god species of planet Earth. 

Only true mastery of this double-edged sword can allow us to rule with wisdom and grace. 

Schalk
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Industrial Revolution: Welcome to the Age of Stuff

The industrial revolution started when we figured out that large mechanized facilities could produce lots of identical items at a low cost. 

This resulted in a tremendous increase in the amount of stuff the average citizen could afford. 

And, as with all our technological revolutions, this one comes with its own set of pros and cons. 

Incredible production growth

Yesterday’s post mentioned how the agricultural revolution drove a 20x population increase over the past four centuries. Well, the industrial revolution create a 100x increase in production over just the last two. 

Think about it… All the value the world produced in the entire year of 1820 can be produced in 3 or 4 days this year! 

This is the power of the industrial revolution. 

The good, the bad and the ugly

This revolution made capitalism a big thing. People could now deploy some capital up front and expect to see large returns from the greatly increased productivity it yielded. 

I wrote a previous post on the consequences of this revolution:

  • The good: Billions lifted out of poverty (still ongoing).
  • The bad: Minimal or even negative impact on health and happiness beyond a certain point. 
  • The ugly: Environmental destruction, social injustice and self-destructive behavior. 

Time to evolve

Our mission in the 21st century is simple: address the bad by stimulating the good and eliminating the ugly. 

As mentioned earlier, a sense of purpose is an excellent antidote to the disappointing absence of happiness from excess consumption. And there are few better purposes than improving other people’s lives. 

The good news is that there are encouraging signs of such a trend starting to develop among younger generations. This trend needs all the encouragement it can get 🙂

We’ll come back to that next week…

Schalk
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Technology: Humanity’s Double Edged Sword

Biologically, you and I are very similar to our forefathers who lived as simple animals hunting and gathering on the African plains. 

The key difference between now and then is the degree to which we have used technology to manipulate our environment to our benefit. 

Technology has improved our lives in countless ways. We must acknowledge that and be very thankful for it.

But I’m sure you’ll agree that technology also has a dark side. 

Luckily, smart individual choices can allow us to tap all the awesome benefits from technology, while avoiding the problems it creates. 

That is the focus of the fifth chapter of Supermorning. 

Technology revolutions

There are four key technology revolutions that got us to where we are today:

  • Agricultural: Stupendous increases in food production.
  • Industrial: Stupendous increases in the production of stuff. 
  • Techno-scientific: Stupendous increases in rate of change and technological power.
  • Digital: Stupendous increases in the amount of easily accessible information. 

The astute among you will notice the recurring use of “stupendous increases”. That’s what a technological revolution does. It lets us do more.

And not just a little more – a stupefying amount more. 

More is better… up to a point

Both us and our environment have limited capacity. Hence, it’s only logical that stupefying increases only help up to a point. 

This is best captured by the marginal utility curve: the increase in benefit derived from increased use of a technology, good or service. 

At the start, the marginal utility of most technologies is highly positive. But as saturation is approached, marginal utility becomes insignificantly low or even negative. 

Humanity’s problems with technology all stem from our inability to stop our increased use when the marginal utility curve turns negative. 

A journey through the revolutions

To drive this point home, we’ll spend the rest of the week on a little trip through the four technological revolutions listed above. 

See you tomorrow when we see how the agricultural revolution gave us total caloric abundance.