Making the Modern World: Materials and Dematerialization
by Vaclav Smil · 16 Dec 2013 · 396pp · 117,897 words
5 Energy Cost of Materials 4.6 Life-Cycle Assessments 4.7 Recycling Chapter 5: Are We Dematerializing? 5.1 Apparent Dematerializations 5.2 Relative Dematerializations: Specific Weight Reductions 5.3 Consequences of Dematerialization 5.4 Relative Dematerialization in Modern Economies 5.5 Declining Energy Intensities 5.6 Decarbonization and Desulfurization Chapter 6: Material Outlook
…
6.1 Natural Resources 6.2 Wasting Less 6.3 New Materials and Dematerialization 6.4 Chances of Fundamental Departures Appendix A: Units and Unit Multiples Units Used in the Text Unit Multiples Submultiples Appendix B: US Material Production
…
the author shall be liable for any damages arising herefrom. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Smil, Vaclav. Making the modern world : materials and dematerialization / Vaclav Smil. pages cm Includes index. ISBN 978-1-119-94253-5 (pbk.) 1. Waste minimization. 2. Materials. 3. Raw materials. I. Title. TD793.
…
extent is it possible to divorce economic growth and improvements in the average standard of living from increased material consumption? In other words, does relative dematerialization (reduced material use per unit of product or performance) lead to absolute decline in demand for materials? In order to answer these questions in
…
of design and manufacturing, and (for those materials that can be recycled) the highest practical rates of recycling may not be enough to result in dematerialization rates great enough to negate the rising demand for materials generated by continuing population growth, rising standards of living, and the universal human preference for
…
America's material intensities – that is material flows per unit of economic product – and their long-term trends in the next chapter dealing with apparent dematerialization of modern economies, but before leaving this section I will sketch some notable per capita consumption levels. In aggregate terms, the USGS accounts translate to
…
provide precisely that kind of information but, as shown in the preceding chapter, such assessments should be used with caution. Similarly, two other measures of dematerialization – declining consumption of goods or lower use of energy per unit of economic product – face a number of intractable data challenges relating to the accounting
…
for tracing both historical and recent changes of material consumption in growing economies. I will review, deconstruct, and assess all of these dematerialization measures. 5.1 Apparent Dematerializations When explaining dematerialization, the OED should have used the conversion from blueprints to computer-assisted design (CAD) as a far more consequential example of disappearing
…
uses of paper than the replacement of printed stock certificates by electronic versions. That apparent dematerialization eliminated roomfuls of workers at their slanted drafting boards and replaced large numbers of paper blueprints filed in heavy storage steel cabinets with electronic graphics
…
CAD, large and small sheets of paper are gone, as are drafting tables, chairs, and utensils, and large steel storage cabinets – but creating and preserving dematerialized blueprints requires extensive infrastructures of modern electronic computing, redundant mass data storage, and communication, ranging from specialized software (written by using other computers) to large
…
current and transmitting it along HV and distribution lines to final consumers). Consequently, even in a case that appears to be the perfect example of dematerialization, the reality is nothing but a complex form of material substitution. Diffusion of CAD has reduced wood harvesting, production of pulp, paper, and drafting
…
such exercises were much easier to conduct, there is little doubt that their results would have a wide range of outcomes. Microprocessors have helped to dematerialize an increasing assortment of products and services, from books (e-books accessible on computers and on numerous e-readers) and educational materials (on-line
…
a system for reservation and e-ticketing by a large international airline. And it would be even trickier to account for the consequences of these dematerializations. Access to on-line reservations for every airline flying a particular route has created more competition, reduced prices, and contributed to increased frequency of
…
virtual activities on the overall material requirements of the museum itself: the only certain conclusion is that they will not go away. 5.2 Relative Dematerializations: Specific Weight Reductions Reduction of material inputs in production can be accomplished in four principal ways: by gradual improvements that do not involve new materials
…
and bulky vacuum tubes, first by tiny transistors and then by transistors crowded onto silicon chips to make microprocessors. In reality, these processes of relative dematerialization are not mutually exclusive and, as in the just described case of beverage containers, strategies that combine two or more approaches have been common. But
…
cans, and both kinds of containers have been progressively redesigned in order to use thinner body sheets and smaller tops. In other cases, relative dematerialization has been a welcome consequence of innovations motivated by other goals. The substitution of tiles by plastic flooring simulating tile design was not driven by
…
7 orders of magnitude (40 million times) was accompanied by only a 60-fold increase of total mass. This is an exceptional example of relative dematerialization associated with an enormous operational improvement, and performance/mass gains of an order of magnitude are limited to devices that are functionally dominated by microprocessors
…
microchips are not the dominant component of the total design, there has been no even remotely similar mass decline, and in some cases microprocessor-driven dematerialization has been actually accompanied by substantial increases of overall mass. Passenger cars (and other two-axle four-wheel vehicles) are perhaps the best example
…
air conditioners) and a still growing range of electronic gadgets ranging from TVs and CD players to game boxes, personal computers, and cellphones. Clearly, relative dematerialization is decidedly one of those “many parallel instances” noted by Jevons as less means more. Progressively lower mass (and hence decreased cost) of individual products
…
and an incredible lack of progress during a quarter century that witnessed so many important technical advances. Finally, there has not been any progressive automotive dematerialization in the USA because, until 2004, the average distance driven annually per capita increased, making higher demands on fuel production and distribution, on car
…
longer distances had increased the average per capita mass of American vehicles more than 30-fold compared to 1920. An analogical calculation involving the relative dematerialization of prime movers and the massively rising aggregate consumption of materials could be made for the modern airline industry. The thrust-to-weight ratio of
…
pioneer of material substitutions using light-weight metals and compounds, a trend that has now culminated in increasing reliance on carbon composites. But this relative dematerialization has not resulted in lighter commercial fleets as their composition shifted toward larger aircraft. This trend is best illustrated by the evolution of Boeing 737
…
widespread possession of a widening range of consumer goods and the deliberately engineered rapid obsolescence of many products are two notable factors that militate against dematerialization even in the most affluent societies already suffused with goods, and the net outcome can be determined only by taking a longer look at aggregate
…
prosperity of Europe's agricultural sector. Keeping these realities in mind, these statistics show that between 2000 and 2009 resource productivities – reverse indicators of relative dematerialization measured in €/kg and including all fossil fuels – have improved in most EU countries. These productivity gains rose by 17% for the EU-27,
…
outsourcing of material-intensive (and often also polluting) industries to foreign low-cost producers has lowered the direct domestic consumption of primary inputs; and relative dematerialization has slowed down the growth of demand. In a few countries with reliable data the overall material inputs have stabilized or have even slightly declined
…
currency or, for international comparisons, per constant US$ (that is monies adjusted for inflation). The most obvious advantage of tracing this indirect measure of relative dematerialization is that historical data series for total primary energy supply – TPES, an aggregate of all fuels and primary (that is hydro, nuclear, wind, and
…
laudable result of determined efforts to improve energy conversion efficiencies in industries, household, and transportation, and it may be a good proxy indicator of gradual dematerialization. But it can also be the not so laudable outcome of a large-scale deindustrialization that has seen energy-intensive activities (metallurgy, chemical syntheses, heavy
…
anticipated rise of hydrogen, the good element, has clearly been proceeding at a slower pace. In any case, what is true about relative and absolute dematerialization of global material consumption is true about relative and absolute decarbonization of the global energy supply: in both cases relative declines have been unmistakable, impressive
…
gains that can be impressively demonstrated by long-term tracing of specific energy and material uses, that is by declining energy intensities and by relative dematerialization, as well as by moderation, or even near-elimination, of typical environmental impacts. At the same time, growing populations and improving quality of life
…
synthetic fertilizers, polymers (plastics), and metals and nonmetallic elements not previously exploited by pre-industrial societies. In all of these cases there has been no dematerialization in absolute terms, not on the national level for any major economy and not on the global level. These realities lead to many obvious questions
…
material and energy savings are nowhere near early exhaustion. These opportunities will be further enhanced by new materials and by the continuing advances in relative dematerialization, topics for a separate section. I will close the book (without normative prescriptions) by raising questions about some fundamental departures from the twentieth-century
…
in many countries declining) and aging population could be largely or completely met by a combination of continued lowering of average energy intensities, of relative dematerialization of products and services, and by intensified recycling and reuse. And the greatest contributor to the rising material demand of the past generation will not
…
charge-carrying capacity far surpasses that of Si, in the case of InSb by 2 orders of magnitude (Service, 2009). 6.3 New Materials and Dematerialization Prospects for new materials, for better varieties of commonly used commodities and for more efficient (above all less energy-intensive) and less environmentally damaging means
…
aggregate material demand before 2050. The environment responds to absolute inputs and throughputs of pollutants resulting from these larger material flows: of course, without relative dematerialization the global and national atmospheric emissions, water pollution, land degradation, inappropriate waste disposal, and toxic burden would be even worse, but the combination of
…
continuing relative dematerialization, moderated population growth, and improved environmental protection would have to be seen as a great success if it could just slow down the overall rate
…
noticeable declines (akin to the already achieved turnaround in global emissions of SO2 or elimination of lead from common consumer products). During the past generation, dematerialization, defined in terms of declining consumption per GDP of energy or of goods, has generally persisted in both affluent and modernizing countries (Ausubel and Waggoner
…
high hopes that people infatuated with e-gadgets have for the transformative powers of electronics in general and for its capacity as an agent of dematerialization in particular. How wrong that conclusion is can be best illustrated by looking at the material consequences of smartphones and other, concurrently diffusing, electronic
…
cycle designed to manage stability – can be taken, first in order to limit consumption of materials, and then to begin to move to absolute dematerialization? And does the best path toward this goal lead through collective enforcement or individual enlightenment? Of course, history offers many examples of societies whose rulers
…
rise of global temperatures, and even more so their unprecedented decadal jump, would likely lead to measures whose effect would be to accelerate the relative dematerialization (and decarbonization) of the global economy and to reduce overall demand for materials. The other decisive and unpredictable development would be an unprecedented economic crisis
…
Geosciences, University of Texas, Austin, TX, http://phe.rockefeller.edu/AustinDecarbonization/AustinDecarbonization.pdf (accessed 22 May 2013). Ausubel, J.H. and Waggoner, P.E. (2008) Dematerialization: variety, caution, and persistence. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 105: 12774–12779. AWWS (American Water Works Service
…
Forge: How American Business Produced Victory in World War II, Random House, New York. Herman, R., Ardekani, S.A. and Ausubel, J.H. (1990) Dematerialization. Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 37: 333–347. Hermes, M.E. (1996) Enough for One Lifetime: Wallace Carothers, Inventor of Nylon, American Chemical Society and
…
cost of sizes Bridges Bronze Calcium Cameras Cans aluminum beverage garbage steel Carbonates Cars energy cost of Ford Model T fuel consumption SUVs US Cellphones dematerialization due to Cells photovoltaic (PV) Cement in China energy cost of Portland Roman Ceramics Charcoal China concrete in history material consumption in metals in
…
Clay Coal and decarbonization Coccolithophores Coke Computers personal Concrete in China in construction deterioration of reinforced Consumption direct material (DMC) Copper Cotton Crops Dams Decarbonization Dematerialization consequences of of national economies relative Density energy specific Design computer assisted (CAD) Desulfurization flue gas (FGD) Diatoms Dioxide carbon nitrogen sulfur titanium Electricity
The Dark Cloud: How the Digital World Is Costing the Earth
by Guillaume Pitron · 14 Jun 2023 · 271pp · 79,355 words
ourselves on the Web? What entity will govern the world of tomorrow on the basis of its control of the physical architecture of our supposedly dematerialised lives? For two years, across four continents, I followed the trail of our emails and the ‘likes’ of our holiday photos: from the steppes of
…
one … because they don’t exist. If the French expression is anything to go by, a happy life is a hidden life. If not a dematerialised one. On the other side, we have ‘pioneer’ networks and communities advocating for moderate, responsible, and eco-friendly digital habits.13 Among them is a
…
!’, an engineer tells me, almost embarrassed by how obvious this is.11 It is becoming increasingly clear how absurd it is to talk about the ‘dematerialisation’ of our economies when the virtual has such a tremendous physical impact in the real world. More from less But for the billions who subscribe
…
wholesale to the discourse of the digital gurus, admitting that our economies and way of life cannot be dematerialised without material is nothing short of heresy. Wasn’t the eruption of the digital realm, which is obviously ‘virtual’, supposed to curb our consumption of
…
a population of 1.3 million — the next stop in my investigation, in the summer of 2020 — holds the prize of the most digitalised and ‘dematerialised’ country in the world. Ninety-nine per cent of Estonia’s public services are online. Other than getting married, divorced, or carrying out major banking
…
marketing vocabulary to sex up the digital world with the attributes of virtuality. Without giving much thought to the words we use, we talk about ‘dematerialised payments’, and ‘holographic’, ‘virtual’, and ‘augmented reality’ headsets for entertainment. But the most ambiguous of all these is ‘the cloud’ — a supposedly
…
dematerialised place where we can store our documents.27 ‘The cloud is ethereal, woolly’, says a specialist in responsible digital activities.28 How do we find
…
for aesthetic harmony has contributed to feeding billions of consumers with the illusion that the digital world is harmless for the planet.34 Yet all dematerialised enterprises over the last 5,000 years tell another story. While it may not seem obvious how writing fits in, its invention by the Mesopotamians
…
would become the very first tool for dematerialising people themselves. ‘The written word has the characteristic of being accessible on demand and able to be consulted at any point. It is thanks to
…
to take place without the physical presence of the object being traded.’36 Then came the bill of exchange, ‘at which point money itself was dematerialised to promote trade, and, from the fifteenth century, would become the elemental tool of international trade and the first major step towards the
…
dematerialisation of the world of the economy.’37 Now, with modern technologies, ‘man will task the machine with the ability to think for him, dematerialising in a way his thoughts’ (with the calculator), but also his words (the
…
telephone) and his image (visual media).38 Dematerialisation therefore began well before the advent of computer technology, by replacing animal with metal, metal with paper, and paper with digital media. The resource did
…
. And given our colossal need for materials to design modern electronic equipment, computerisation just confirms this mechanism. In fact, says a specialist in sustainable IT, ‘Dematerialising means materialising in another way.’39 An era of electronic purges The design of digital interfaces is one thing; their fate at our hands and
…
, antennas, routers, and other WiFi terminals currently in service by 100, 1,000, or even 10,000, and you will reach the conclusion that these ‘dematerialised’ technologies not only consume materials, but are quite simply becoming one of the most massive enterprises in materialisation in history. Companies in sectors as diverse
…
the sand of an allegedly ethereal world free of all physical shackles, we are evading the reality that will eventually catch up with us: a dematerialised world will always be a more materialistic world. This is where the debate takes an ideological turn. The rebound effects can be equally feared and
…
commercial divers await orders from the shore. Also on the beach is Laurent Boudelier, the mayor of the neighbouring town of Saint-Hilaire-de-Riez. ‘Dematerialisation is a physical reality’, he tells me. ‘To send and receive data there needs to be a connection’. This connection is what brings the local
…
internet bestows on us this gift of ubiquity, and gives our actions physical consistency both here and thousands of kilometres away. Under the pretext of dematerialising everything, digital technologies materialise twofold what we do. But with the material world comes presence, occupation, power plays, and geopolitics. As we tweet, like, post
…
. In the twenty-first century, states will be prepared to go to war so that we can amuse ourselves. Regardless of what the proponents of dematerialisation say, we will continue to be governed by the fundamental particles of matter, just as much as by time’s arrow, the force of gravity
…
story of how we learned to prosper using fewer resources — and what happens next, Scribner, 2019. Also listen to McAfee on HBR IdeaCast, Episode 700, Dematerialisation and What It Means for the Economy — and Climate Change, 17 September 2019. 15 ‘An eco-modernist manifesto’, ecomodernism.org, April 2015. It could also
…
reading: Lynne Peskoe-Yang, ‘Analysing Every Second of the Classic Dial-Up Modem Sound’, Popular Mechanics, 2 March 2022. 35 Gilles de Chezelles, La Dématérialisation des échanges [‘The dematerialisation of exchanges’], Lavoisier, 2006. 36 Ibid. 37 Ibid. 38 Ibid. 39 Keynote by Bela Loto, op cit. We should rather talk about ‘scaling
…
up matter’ — moving from matter to ‘multi-matter’, instead of ‘dematerialisation’ given this ‘multi-materialisation’ we observe. See Florence Rodhain’s La Nouvelle Religion du numérique [‘The new digital religion’], Libre & Solidaire, 2019. 40 ‘Beijing orders
…
. 41 Christopher L. Magee et al., ‘A simple extension of dematerialization theory: Incorporation of technical progress and the rebound effect’, Technological Forecasting and Social Change, vol. 117, April 2017. The same conclusions were reached in a study on the supposed dematerialisation of 99 world economies: ‘Results show that no countries exhibit a
…
dematerialization of economic activity’. From Federico M. Pulselli et al., ‘The world economy in a cube: A more rational structural
Material World: A Substantial Story of Our Past and Future
by Ed Conway · 15 Jun 2023 · 515pp · 152,128 words
story doesn’t seem to accord with the reality, because this stuff clearly matters. For all that we are told we live in an increasingly dematerialised world, where ever more value lies in intangible items – apps and networks and online services – the physical world continues to underpin everything else. This is
…
sustain ourselves without digging much deeper into the earth and exploding mountains to satisfy our demand for commodities. We will never live in a truly dematerialised world; ever since humans picked up stone and fashioned it into tools we have been exploiting the earth and leaving our mark. But we can
…
. As we waft around the world waving devices that connect wirelessly to local or phone networks it’s easy to convince ourselves that we have dematerialised the information age. Yet none of this – video calls, internet searches, email, cloud servers, streaming box sets – would be possible without something very physical indeed
…
of Invention: Where Be Dragons’, https://antonhowes.substack.com/p/age-of-invention-where-be-dragons . 2 Vaclav Smil, Making the Modern World: Materials and Dematerialization (Wiley, 2013). 3 Ernest Braun and Stuart Macdonald, Revolution in Miniature: The History and Impact of Semiconductor Electronics (Cambridge University Press, 1978). 4 There is
…
., Creating the Twentieth Century: Technical Innovations of 1867–1914 and Their Lasting Impact (Oxford University Press, 2005) Smil, V., Making the Modern World: Materials and Dematerialization (Wiley, 2013) Smil, V., Natural Gas: Fuel for the 21st Century (Wiley, 2015) Smil, V., Still the Iron Age: Iron and Steel in the Modern
The Measure of Progress: Counting What Really Matters
by Diane Coyle · 15 Apr 2025 · 321pp · 112,477 words
2 1 c on t e n t s Figures and Tables vii Introduction 1 1 “Political Arithmetick” 9 2 Productivity without Products 34 3 Dematerialisation 72 4 (Dis)intermediation 99 5 Free 126 6 Borders 154 7 Value 178 8 Wealth 205 9 A New Framework? 240 References 265 Acknowledgements
…
what statistics are needed for economic policy and business decisions. Chapters 3 to 5 then look in detail at measurement challenges due to digitalisation: the dematerialisation of economic value, the disintermediation of activities and business model changes, and the provision of free products. Chapter 6 follows up with a focus on
…
of my work since the mid-1990s—almost since the birth of the World Wide Web, beginning with the “weightlessness” of my 1997 book. 3 Dematerialisation “solutions” are everywhere. Once you notice, it seems that every business is in the business of offering solutions rather than old-fashioned goods and services
…
, but they w ere ahead of their time. This bundling of solutions around simpler products or s ervices is part of the phenomenon of weightlessness, dematerialisation, described previously. The reason for bundling is that the additional services 72 De m a t e r i a l i s a t
…
i o n 73 account for a growing proportion of added value in the economy. This chapter explores the implications of this increasing dematerialisation of economic value for how to understand the changing structure of production, and hence the limitations of current statistics. It covers three phenomena: manufacturers that
…
than (or as well as) physical goods, and the shift to a subscription-based production model. These phenomena are the result of the tide of dematerialisation of value sweeping over manufacturing, and the ways manufacturers are responding. The conventional model is a company that does its own design and R
…
of the distribution of economic value in production networks and on platforms is needed. Fourth, the products discussed in this chapter are examples of the dematerialisation of economic value and involve intangibles. The economic importance of intangibles is unmissable (Haskel and Westlake 2018, Bontadini et al. 2023), but they pose distinctive
…
also provide opportunities for the stronger parties to capture a disproportionate share of the value created. Th ere are both benign and malign aspects of dematerialisation. It is hard to believe that the progressive degradation of consumer experience—the enshittification—will be allowed to continue. 98 Chapter Thr ee In any
…
policymakers should appreciate that the manufacturing-services distinction is increasingly meaningless. The question they need to keep in focus is who is benefiting from the dematerialisation of economic value and the resulting changes in production structures. Are national firms (wherever they are classified) able to provide “solutions,” capturing value downstream or
…
, 203; price indices and, 181; producer prices and GDP, 195–96; quality- adjusting, 46; significance of problems with, 190–95 degrowth movement, 219–21 dematerialisation, 72–98; cloud computing, 88–92; factoryless goods production, 73, 74, 75, 75, 76–81, 881; services, 93–97; servitisation, 73–74, 75, 75, 81
…
narratives and, 26–27; missing activities and innovations, 15–17; social construction of, 25–26; as social products, 220. See also economic measurement economic value: dematerialisation of, 97–98; human elements of, 42; identifying, 85–88; measuring, 263 300 economic welfare, 203–4; comprehensive wealth and, 210–12; evaluation of
…
innovations: productivity growth and, 56–59, 57, 70–71; time and, 65, 66–68, 68 producer prices, 195–201 production: alternative structures, 75 (see also dematerialisation); defined, 105–6; time spent in, 123 production boundary, 105–8; digitally intermediated services and, 104–5; increase in activities crossing, 108–12; shifting activities
We Are as Gods: A Survival Guide for the Age of Abundance
by Peter H. Diamandis and Steven Kotler · 13 Apr 2026 · 225pp · 76,418 words
. While first principles thinking identifies the building blocks, the Six Ds trace the chain reaction that turns innovations into revolutions. From digitization and deception to dematerialization and democratization, it’s a blueprint for technological development and our means of predicting the future. And once you see this cycle, you start seeing
…
—and more innovation follows. The feedback feeds back. As innovation spreads, economies grow, and standards of living improve. Stage Five: Dematerialization Now you see it, now you don’t—welcome to dematerialization, the next stage in the cycle. In the previous stage, cost vanished from the equation. In this one, physicality itself
…
as a Service—where CRISPR gene-editing and DNA synthesis are outsourced to the cloud. Taken together, these shifts mark the business-model side of dematerialization. Today, dematerialization is transforming our ability to meet basic needs. Stadium-size coal-fired power stations are being replaced by solar panels on our roofs. Libraries
…
disguised as e-readers fit inside our pockets. Room-size diagnostic tools now live in smartwatches. Dematerialization makes the digital intangible. Less raw material is consumed on the front end. Less environmental strain on the back end. And in the middle, a
…
? Heads of state? And for what cost? A million dollars a month? Maybe more? But as digitization and deception give way to disruption, demonetization and dematerialization culminate in democratization. In this stage, technology goes wide. ChatGPT, the above example, is the most powerful technology in history. It’s now available to
…
goal. To create OLPC, Jepsen had to combine three or four exponential trends into a single laptop. What she didn’t have to do was dematerialize an entire room’s worth of equipment, including the helium-cooled, two-ton superconducting magnet that sits at the heart of an MRI machine. But
…
nonlinear problems, backpropagation gave rise to multilayered networks and applications in speech recognition, image classification, and natural language processing. This marked AI’s transition into dematerialization, as the era of bulky hardware gave way to flexible software that could learn, iterate, and scale. By the 1990s, AI shed its winter clothes
The Weightless World: Strategies for Managing the Digital Economy
by Diane Coyle · 29 Oct 1998 · 49,604 words
and surveys. The economics profession is only just starting to investigate the properties of weightlessness, which makes much conventional economic analysis outdated. The key is dematerialisation. The value in our economy — whatever it is we are willing to pay money for — has less and less physical mass. Whether it is software
…
-shirt made in Macau or Morocco, or we will buy a designer shirt for 20 or 50 times the price. One of the characteristics of dematerialised output is that its use by one person does not preclude its use by another. Danny Quah, a London School of Economics professor who has
…
ingrained habit of thinking about economic value as something with physical presence, with weight and mass. This is less and less true. Economic value is dematerialising. In 1885 the United Kingdom imported nearly 16 million hundredweights of wheat meal and flour, and 1.1 billion pounds of raw cotton, amongst other
…
or making programmes for satellite television. Most of these are high-technology, depending for their existence on modern computer power and telecommunications. They are also dematerialised, or weightless. Weightlessness has in a sense become a commonplace. It is not too surprising to learn that a third of the increase in global
…
... It’s postnational and postgeographical’.2 Danny Quah, a professor at the London School of Economics, and one of the pioneers of weightless economics, writes: ‘Dematerialised commodities show no respect for space and geography’.3 This is due to a property that he calls ‘infinite expansibility’. Put simply, this means that
…
the use of a dematerialised object by one person does not prevent another from using it. Other people can simultaneously use the word processing code I use as I type
…
do so. This kind of activity has no specific location, and no clear points of entry and exit across national boundaries. Danny Quah says: ‘With dematerialisation, the natural marketplace is unbounded’. It is global. Consider the survey of foreign exchange trading conducted every few years by the Bank for International Settlements
…
movies like Strange Days and Crash set the dystopian future only a year or two away from now. The economic disruptions due to weightlessness, the dematerialisation of the economy — well, most people could do without it, whatever long-term promise it holds out. The next chapter explains in detail that the
…
trades become known. The fact that there are widespread ‘network externalities’, or benefits from using something that grows with the number of users, in the dematerialised industries will reinforce the superstar trend. For example, the Apple Macintosh operating system has always been acknowledged as better than Microsoft’s by industry experts
…
makes life much simpler. The externality put the billionaire into Bill. The mitigating factor in the winner-takes-all trend, Danny Quah notes, is that dematerialisation is also helping to reduce the costs and difficulty of becoming a superstar. You do not need to be born with a great bone structure
…
taxing spending could prove much harder. Governments might be left relying on very high taxes on things whose physical presence means the taxation possibilities cannot dematerialise — such as duties on petrol, for which you have to take your car to the petrol station, or road tolls, or landfill fees. Or perhaps
…
be focused on London, New York and Tokyo? Take the first of these three financial centres. It is a paradox that as its activity has dematerialised, London as a place has become ever more important. Obviously, some things that were done in London have moved thanks to high technology. This includes
…
competitors based in other countries entering their market because of cheaper transport costs and lower barriers to trade, although that is part of it. The dematerialisation of an increasing proportion of economic activity means it is not really taking place anywhere. How can a business get to grips with competition from
…
their book.) In my language, it is the increasing weightlessness of the economy that is taking the superstar phenomenon into ever wider areas of activity. Dematerialisation has two effects. It decreases the cost of delivering a service or product and it increases the market for the service. If I am a
…
down of boundaries. The value in what the financial markets do lies not just in financing tangible trade and direct investment flows, but increasingly in dematerialised functions such as hedging risk. Moreover, governments cannot reverse technological change Globalism and Globaloney 173 in the way they might be able to rebuild cross
…
between computers. The technology for private currencies is already in place. Their emergence waits only for our monetary habits to change. The biggest challenge The dematerialisation of the economy means the structure of trade is changing so that trade rules will have to adapt. It also has the potential to transform
…
what we understand as money. The one thing that will never dematerialise is people. People will be the biggest challenge to the existing international economic order. The economic pressures on the world’s poorest populations, which have
…
people, not places where people go to work and produce economic value’.12 He argues that the dematerialisation of economic output, with the irrelevance of transportation costs that implies, means: ‘The natural marketplace for dematerialised objects is essentially unbounded’.13 He reckons that loosens the ties of geography. Yet the fact that
…
, the benefit that users of a product derive the more users there are, and infinite expansibility, the property that allows one person to use a dematerialised commodity without it detracting from anybody else’s use of the same thing. It is feasible for one company to supply an entire global market
…
of the fundamental economic trend towards weightlessness. The two transformations, political and economic, go hand in hand of course. As the last chapter argued, the dematerialisation of value means the economically efficient scale of government has changed, and it has become increasingly clear that national governments cannot manage the national economy
…
minimal or catastrophic the results will be. In the economic sphere, the course of development has taken us down a path of increasingly weightless and dematerialised production. This means that for the first time there is no economy ‘out there’ either, no fixed framework of activity within which people have a
…
offers hope that future growth in the rich part of the world will not put the same pressures on the environment. The great thing about dematerialised production is that it does not use physical resources. The natural resource cost of financial services is extremely low compared to steel mills; they use
…
123-4, 126-31, 14041, 182, 221 currency 167, 169-70, 177, 188, 189-90 David, P. 197 decentralisation 207-10, see also redesigning government dematerialisation xiv-xv, 3, 4, 13, 115 dependency/poverty trap 85-6, 123, 135-7, 140, 230 Desai, M. 90 Disney, R. 157 Disraeli, B. 155
The Future of Money
by Bernard Lietaer · 28 Apr 2013
of the metal currency. The next step in the disappearing act is already well under way. The vast majority of our paper money has further dematerialized into binary bits in computers belonging to our bankers, brokers, or other financial institutions, and there is serious talk that all of it may soon
…
scarce. What are the consequences of these characteristics for a society that uses information as its primary economic resource? First, such an economy is literally dematerialising. In 1996, Alan Greenspan noted: 'The US output today, if measured in tons, is the same as one hundred years ago, yet the GDP?" has
…
, design, sales, advertising, most of which could be 'delocated' anywhere in the world and transmitted via highspeed data lines. Along with the other factors, this dematerialization process makes it much harder for governments or regulatory agencies to measure, tax or regulate what is going on. For instance, the French government will
More From Less: The Surprising Story of How We Learned to Prosper Using Fewer Resources – and What Happens Next
by Andrew McAfee · 30 Sep 2019 · 372pp · 94,153 words
—Reid Hoffman, cofounder of LinkedIn and coauthor of Blitzscaling “Andrew McAfee’s optimistic and humane book documents a profoundly important and under-appreciated megatrend—the dematerialization of our economy. In a world where there is much to worry about, his analytical optimism is very welcome. Anyone who worries about the future
…
the National Economic Council “In More from Less Andrew McAfee conclusively demonstrates how environmentalism requires more technology and capitalism, not less. Our modern technologies actually dematerialize our consumption, giving us higher human welfare with lower material inputs. This is an urgently needed and clear-eyed view of how to have our
…
(just look around you), but tech progress changed. We invented the computer, the Internet, and a suite of other digital technologies that let us dematerialize our consumption: over time they allowed us to consume more and more while taking less and less from the planet. This happened because digital technologies
…
yet can support heavier loads. Fuller wrote, “Ephemeralization… is the number one economic surprise of world man.” The word was eventually replaced by its synonym dematerialization in discussions of innovation, technological progress, and resource use. Simon saw many examples of resource scarcity not being a permanent condition—from the discovery of
…
start-year bet in the 2000s.” In a world of rapidly growing populations and economies, falling commodity prices didn’t seem guaranteed. Nor, apparently, was dematerialization. The years after Earth Day saw many cases of specific products using less material: American-made cars, for example, generally got lighter after the Arab
…
2017 study by technology scholars Christopher Magee and Tessaleno Devezas found that “57 different cases clearly indicate that technological improvement has not resulted in ‘automatic’ dematerialization.” The authors predicted, “The future is not highly likely to reverse this finding.” It seemed that Jevons and Marshall were still correct, well more
…
the amounts finally ending up as waste probably began to fall from sometime between 2001 and 2003.” Goodall was eloquent about the significance of the dematerialization of the United States or United Kingdom: “If correct, this finding is important. It suggests that economic growth in a mature economy does not
…
goods consumed. A sustainable economy does not necessarily have to be a no-growth economy.” I agreed with Goodall about the significance of economy-wide dematerialization, especially because the United Kingdom and United States were the leading economies of the Industrial Era—a period that, as we’ve seen, was
…
and extraordinary rise in the use of natural resources and other exploitations of the environment. If those two countries could reverse course and achieve substantial dematerialization, it would be a fascinating and hopeful development. It would also be surprising because it would mean that something fundamental about the mainstream understanding of
…
have caused it to change? I thought this was a great question, so I decided to join Ausubel, Goodall, and others in investigating dematerialization. And if absolute dematerialization turned out to be a real and durable phenomenon, I wanted to identify its causes, discuss its implications, make testable predictions about its future
…
suggest interventions—changes that individuals, communities, and governments can make—that would help accelerate and spread it. The Great Reversal Fortunately for anyone interested in dematerialization, a lot of high-quality evidence exists about resource consumption over time in America. Much of it comes from the US Geological Survey, a federal
…
examination of the geological structure, mineral resources, and products of the national domain.” That “examination of… mineral resources” is a boon to anyone interested in dematerialization, because since the start of the twentieth century the USGS has been collecting data on the use of the most economically important minerals in America
…
America was on post-peak materials. American consumption of plastics, which is not tracked by the USGS, is an exception to the overall trend of dematerialization. Outside of recessions, the United States continues to use more plastic year after year in the form of trash bags, water bottles, food packaging,
…
consumption of metals, chemicals, and fertilizer in recent years. Developing countries, especially fast-growing ones such as India and China, are probably not yet dematerializing. But I predict that they will start getting more from less of at least some resources in the not-too-distant future. In the chapters
…
consumption total for that year. Even if all this copper and other such resources could be tracked, they would not change the overall conclusions about dematerialization. Net imports of resource-heavy finished products are only a small part—less than 4 percent—of the overall US economy. III. The “most
…
widely considered pests. People in many American neighborhoods today feel that there are too many white-tailed deer, Canada geese, and beaver. The story of dematerialization is not the story of following the CRIB strategies. Except for the excellent idea of imposing limits on polluting and pursuing animals, these strategies were
…
ignored (we didn’t embrace degrowth and stop consuming), abandoned (we stopping going back to the land), irrelevant (dematerialization has nothing to do with recycling), or deeply misguided (China’s attempt to limit family size was a huge mistake). So how did we finally
…
Ehrlich responded with a tweet: “China to End One-Child Policy, Allowing Families Two Children… GIBBERING INSANITY—THE GROWTH-FOREVER GANG.” CHAPTER 7 What Causes Dematerialization? Markets and Marvels The triumph of the industrial arts will advance the cause of civilization more rapidly than its warmest advocates could have hoped. —Charles
…
is necessary. That smartphone also uses no audiotapes, videotapes, compact discs, or camera film. The iPhone and its descendants are among the world champions of dematerialization. They use vastly less metal, plastic, glass, and silicon than did the devices they have replaced and don’t need media such as paper,
…
of interactions among complex and interlocking social, technological, and economic systems. So it’s going to keep surprising us. As the Second Machine Age progresses, dematerialization accelerates. Erik and I coined the phrase Second Machine Age to draw a contrast with the Industrial Era, which as we’ve seen transformed the
…
planet. All of these principles are about the combination of technological progress and capitalism, which are the first of the two pairs of forces causing dematerialization. Technology: The Human Interface with the Material World One of my favorite definitions of technology comes from the philosopher Emmanuel Mesthene, who called it “
…
about resource availability, which were taken seriously when they were released, have been so wrong? Because the Limits to Growth team pretty clearly underestimated both dematerialization and the endless search for new reserves. Capitalism and tech progress combine to drive both of these trends—the use of fewer resources and the
…
but deeply misleading. Our planet has amply supplied us for our journey. Especially since we’re quickly slimming, swapping, optimizing, and evaporating our way to dematerialization. The Second Enlightenment Abraham Lincoln, the only US president to hold a patent,IV had a deep insight about capitalism. He wrote that the patent
…
interest” is equally good as a summary of capitalism. They interact in a self-reinforcing and ever-expanding cycle, and they’re now creating a dematerializing world. Innovators come up with new and useful technologies. They then partner with entrepreneurs or become entrepreneurs themselves as James Watt did. A new
…
to cause economies to get bigger and people to become more prosperous. But instead of also causing greater use of natural resources, they instead sparked dematerialization, something truly new under the sun. The fuel of interest in eliminating costs was added to the fire of the computer revolution, and the
…
and heat, require less fertilizer, and so on. They’re a powerful way to continue the Green Revolution, and to continue the recent trend of dematerializing agriculture—of getting larger and larger harvests from smaller and smaller amounts of land, water, fertilizer, and herbicide. Forbidding GMOs is bad not only
…
responsive government, and public awareness the “four horsemen of the optimist.” When all four are present, we tread more lightly on our planet. We progressively dematerialize our consumption, reduce pollution, and take better care of our fellow creatures. That may sound naive and utopian, but the evidence convinces me that it
…
and unresponsive, and corruption is widespread. As a result, only the elites have a real chance at success. These ideas help us tie together dematerialization, the four horsemen of the optimist, and prosperity. I argued previously in chapter 7 that some economies have left behind the consumption patterns of the
…
Industrial Era and started to dematerialize because of the combination of capitalism and technological progress. My definition of capitalism corresponds closely to Acemoglu and Robinson’s definition of inclusive institutions. Key
…
Age—digital and otherwise—allowed designers to make engines that were simultaneously more efficient and more powerful. And all throughout this time, engines themselves were dematerializing. As Bloomberg put it in a 2017 story, “Combustion engines on America’s roads are about 42 percent smaller than they were 40 years
…
this story is tech progress. Explosive harpoons, spotter helicopters, and factory ships made Russian whaling brutally effective. But capitalism, tech progress’s partner in dematerialization, was totally absent. In the Soviet economy ship captains didn’t have to sell their catch (they just had to weigh it) and so received
…
chapters that tech progress, capitalism, responsive government, and public awareness—the four horsemen of the optimist—are largely responsible for the broad and deep dematerialization of our consumption and our economies we’ve experienced since Earth Day. They’re also behind other positive changes we’ve made in the way
…
that capitalism, responsive government, and public awareness have also been spreading quickly around the world. I’ve found that these trends are underappreciated—just as dematerialization is—so it’s important to document them clearly. Once we’ve done that, we can talk about their effects with greater confidence. This
…
the areas that are getting left behind as capitalism and tech progress race ahead. As we’ve seen, these two horsemen are directly contributing to dematerialization, and to many fundamental improvements in both the state of nature and the human condition. But they’re also contributing directly to disconnection by concentrating
…
fewer of them. In advanced economies such as America’s, the cumulative impact of this combination of capitalism and tech progress is clear: absolute dematerialization of the economy and society, and thus a smaller footprint on our planet. The second way Romer’s ideas about technology and growth are showing
…
it can affect capitalism the most. As we’ve seen over and over, tech progress supplies opportunities to trim costs (and improve performance) via dematerialization, and capitalism provides the motive to do so. As a result, the Second Enlightenment will continue as we move deeper into the twenty-first century
…
, airplane struts and wings, and countless other parts. Because 3-D printing generates virtually no waste and doesn’t require massive molds, it accelerates dematerialization. We’ll also be building things out of very different materials from what we’re using today. We’re rapidly improving our ability to use
…
These energy sources use virtually no resources once they’re up and running and generate no greenhouse gases; they’re among the world champions of dematerialization. In the decades to come they might well be joined by nuclear fusion, the astonishingly powerful process that takes place inside the sun and other
…
to indicate how broad and exciting are the possibilities offered by the two horsemen of capitalism and technological progress, and how they’ll continue to dematerialize our consumption and let us increase our prosperity while treading more lightly on our planet. Healing a Hotter World But what if we’re
…
so drastically that all of our planet-sparing technologies and other innovations won’t matter much? Does global warming overshadow all the good news about dematerialization, pollution reduction, and other benefits brought by the four horsemen? No, it absolutely doesn’t. In the next chapter we’ll discuss how bad
…
simply because of the size of its economy; America generates about 25 percent of total global output. Third, it matters also because I believe that dematerialization trends in America are leading indicators of global trends, so it’s important to watch what happens in that country. And fourth, data about
…
all more effective and important than scolding CEOs. CEOs and other members of the business community don’t need to be encouraged to keep pursuing dematerialization. They’re going to do this anyway. Especially when so many exciting technologies are available, and so much capital around the world is looking
…
unique combination of intelligence, tenacity, and good cheer. Erez Yoeli and I both spoke at TEDxCambridge in 2018, and my many conversations with him about dematerialization are reflected in these pages. Dmitri Gunn, who organizes TEDxCambridge, thought enough of the ideas found here to give them their first public airing. Once
…
Rebound Effect,” Technological Forecasting and Social Change 117 (April 2017): 196–205, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.techfore.2016.12.001. Chapter 5: The Dematerialization Surprise website Quote Investigator found no reference earlier than Samuelson’s: “When the Facts Change, I Change My Mind. What Do You Do, Sir?,” Quote
…
of Northern California: “Basic Facts about Sea Otters,” Defenders of Wildlife, January 10, 2019, https://defenders.org/sea-otter/basic-facts. Chapter 7: What Causes Dematerialization? Markets and Marvels total cropland in the country stood at approximately 380 million acres: “Major Land Uses,” USDA ERS—Major Land Uses, accessed March 25
…
percent: https://twitter.com/HumanProgress/status/1068596289485586432. “A decade later steel cans were on the way out”: Vaclav Smil, Making the Modern World: Materials and Dematerialization (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2014), 123. Cichon noticed something striking about the ad: Steve Cichon, “Everything from This 1991 Radio Shack Ad I
In Our Own Image: Savior or Destroyer? The History and Future of Artificial Intelligence
by George Zarkadakis · 7 Mar 2016 · 405pp · 117,219 words
considered a physical thing. There was no disconnection between mind and body. They were one and the same. After Descartes, the mind became disembodied. It dematerialised. Vitalism was the scientific manifestation of dualism. But although vitalism was discredited, dualism was not. The disambiguation of the mind persisted, and became even more
…
of existence. Perhaps, then, the ‘purpose’ of a material universe is to arrive at a time when intelligent beings like us can dematerialise it, after they have first dematerialised themselves. This is a curious conclusion. There is something profoundly teleological and apocalyptic about it. In fact, it looks like a rehashed belief
…
became apparent that a program is just a ‘pattern of information’. Indeed, as symbolic logic became computer languages, the ‘program’, as well as the ‘data’, dematerialised completely. Atoms, the units of matter, became bits, the units of information. The program and the data transmuted from mechanical clogs and cards into pure
…
218 Marconi, Guglielmo 239 Maria (robot in Metropolis) 50, 51 Marlowe, Christopher 63 Mars colonisation 291 Marx, Groucho 205 materialism versus idealism 92–4 mathematical dematerialisation view 92 mathematical foundations of the universe 103–6 mathematical reflexivity 186–7 mathematics 31 formal logical systems 200–11 views on the nature of
The Rare Metals War
by Guillaume Pitron · 15 Feb 2020 · 249pp · 66,492 words
-wars against virtual criminal networks that perpetrate increasingly powerful cyber-attacks.18 Yet this is also a prophecy that promises the utopia of a dematerialised world. Already dematerialisation is synonymous with working from home, e-commerce, electronic documentation, digital data storage, and more. By limiting the physical transportation of information, and migrating
…
, and billions of tablets, smartphones, and other connected devices with batteries that need to be recharged. Thus, the supposedly virtuous shift towards the age of dematerialisation is nothing more than an outright ruse, for there is no end to its physical impact.27 Feeding this digital leviathan will require coal-fired
…
favour of a service economy. The focus should be on knowledge and the immense added value it generates. This belief, echoing the utopia of a dematerialised world discussed in Chapter Two, was heavily subscribed to by the business world at the turn of the twenty-first century. Like Alcatel-Lucent’s
…
resources used to run the US power stations are extracted. ‘There’s nothing virtual about our clicks,’ states the documentary. Referring to the illusion of dematerialisation, it poses the question: ‘will our emails ultimately destroy the Appalachia mountains?’ Mark P. Mills, ‘The Cloud Begins with Coal: big data, big networks, big
Less Is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World
by Jason Hickel · 12 Aug 2020 · 286pp · 87,168 words
Bold: How to Go Big, Create Wealth and Impact the World
by Peter H. Diamandis and Steven Kotler · 3 Feb 2015 · 368pp · 96,825 words
Prosperity Without Growth: Foundations for the Economy of Tomorrow
by Tim Jackson · 8 Dec 2016 · 573pp · 115,489 words
Other People's Money: Masters of the Universe or Servants of the People?
by John Kay · 2 Sep 2015 · 478pp · 126,416 words
The Inevitable: Understanding the 12 Technological Forces That Will Shape Our Future
by Kevin Kelly · 6 Jun 2016 · 371pp · 108,317 words
Growth: From Microorganisms to Megacities
by Vaclav Smil · 23 Sep 2019
The Social Life of Money
by Nigel Dodd · 14 May 2014 · 700pp · 201,953 words
The Coming Wave: Technology, Power, and the Twenty-First Century's Greatest Dilemma
by Mustafa Suleyman · 4 Sep 2023 · 444pp · 117,770 words
The Future Is Faster Than You Think: How Converging Technologies Are Transforming Business, Industries, and Our Lives
by Peter H. Diamandis and Steven Kotler · 28 Jan 2020 · 501pp · 114,888 words
What's Mine Is Yours: How Collaborative Consumption Is Changing the Way We Live
by Rachel Botsman and Roo Rogers · 2 Jan 2010 · 411pp · 80,925 words
The End of Absence: Reclaiming What We've Lost in a World of Constant Connection
by Michael Harris · 6 Aug 2014 · 259pp · 73,193 words
The Wealth of Humans: Work, Power, and Status in the Twenty-First Century
by Ryan Avent · 20 Sep 2016 · 323pp · 90,868 words
Empire of Things: How We Became a World of Consumers, From the Fifteenth Century to the Twenty-First
by Frank Trentmann · 1 Dec 2015 · 1,213pp · 376,284 words
What Technology Wants
by Kevin Kelly · 14 Jul 2010 · 476pp · 132,042 words
Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress
by Steven Pinker · 13 Feb 2018 · 1,034pp · 241,773 words
Plenitude: The New Economics of True Wealth
by Juliet B. Schor · 12 May 2010 · 309pp · 78,361 words
Grand Transitions: How the Modern World Was Made
by Vaclav Smil · 2 Mar 2021 · 1,324pp · 159,290 words
Exponential: How Accelerating Technology Is Leaving Us Behind and What to Do About It
by Azeem Azhar · 6 Sep 2021 · 447pp · 111,991 words
The End of Doom: Environmental Renewal in the Twenty-First Century
by Ronald Bailey · 20 Jul 2015 · 417pp · 109,367 words
The End of Traffic and the Future of Transport: Second Edition
by David Levinson and Kevin Krizek · 17 Aug 2015 · 257pp · 64,285 words
The Shock of the Old: Technology and Global History Since 1900
by David Edgerton · 7 Dec 2006 · 353pp · 91,211 words
Addiction by Design: Machine Gambling in Las Vegas
by Natasha Dow Schüll · 19 Aug 2012
Exponential Organizations: Why New Organizations Are Ten Times Better, Faster, and Cheaper Than Yours (And What to Do About It)
by Salim Ismail and Yuri van Geest · 17 Oct 2014 · 292pp · 85,151 words
Addiction by Design: Machine Gambling in Las Vegas
by Natasha Dow Schüll · 15 Jan 2012 · 632pp · 166,729 words
Money, Real Quick: The Story of M-PESA
by Tonny K. Omwansa, Nicholas P. Sullivan and The Guardian · 28 Feb 2012 · 140pp · 91,067 words
The Limits to Growth: The 30-Year Update
by Donella H. Meadows, Jørgen Randers and Dennis L. Meadows · 15 Apr 2004 · 357pp · 100,718 words
Rationality: From AI to Zombies
by Eliezer Yudkowsky · 11 Mar 2015 · 1,737pp · 491,616 words
A Place of My Own: The Architecture of Daydreams
by Michael Pollan · 15 Jan 1997 · 317pp · 107,653 words
Corporate Finance: Theory and Practice
by Pierre Vernimmen, Pascal Quiry, Maurizio Dallocchio, Yann le Fur and Antonio Salvi · 16 Oct 2017 · 1,544pp · 391,691 words
Cloudmoney: Cash, Cards, Crypto, and the War for Our Wallets
by Brett Scott · 4 Jul 2022 · 308pp · 85,850 words
Business Lessons From a Radical Industrialist
by Ray C. Anderson · 28 Mar 2011 · 412pp · 113,782 words
Money: 5,000 Years of Debt and Power
by Michel Aglietta · 23 Oct 2018 · 665pp · 146,542 words
50 Future Ideas You Really Need to Know
by Richard Watson · 5 Nov 2013 · 219pp · 63,495 words
How Did We Get Into This Mess?: Politics, Equality, Nature
by George Monbiot · 14 Apr 2016 · 334pp · 82,041 words
The God Species: Saving the Planet in the Age of Humans
by Mark Lynas · 3 Oct 2011 · 369pp · 98,776 words
The Unusual Billionaires
by Saurabh Mukherjea · 16 Aug 2016
Decoding the World: A Roadmap for the Questioner
by Po Bronson · 14 Jul 2020 · 320pp · 95,629 words
Numbers Don't Lie: 71 Stories to Help Us Understand the Modern World
by Vaclav Smil · 4 May 2021 · 252pp · 60,959 words
Fantasyland
by Kurt Andersen · 5 Sep 2017
Track Changes
by Matthew G. Kirschenbaum · 1 May 2016 · 519pp · 142,646 words
The Truth Machine: The Blockchain and the Future of Everything
by Paul Vigna and Michael J. Casey · 27 Feb 2018 · 348pp · 97,277 words
Radical Technologies: The Design of Everyday Life
by Adam Greenfield · 29 May 2017 · 410pp · 119,823 words
Before Babylon, Beyond Bitcoin: From Money That We Understand to Money That Understands Us (Perspectives)
by David Birch · 14 Jun 2017 · 275pp · 84,980 words
Green Tyranny: Exposing the Totalitarian Roots of the Climate Industrial Complex
by Rupert Darwall · 2 Oct 2017 · 451pp · 115,720 words
From Counterculture to Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network, and the Rise of Digital Utopianism
by Fred Turner · 31 Aug 2006 · 339pp · 57,031 words
Fantasyland: How America Went Haywire: A 500-Year History
by Kurt Andersen · 4 Sep 2017 · 522pp · 162,310 words
Fewer, Better Things: The Hidden Wisdom of Objects
by Glenn Adamson · 6 Aug 2018 · 220pp · 64,234 words
Connectography: Mapping the Future of Global Civilization
by Parag Khanna · 18 Apr 2016 · 497pp · 144,283 words
Lurking: How a Person Became a User
by Joanne McNeil · 25 Feb 2020 · 239pp · 80,319 words
After the New Economy: The Binge . . . And the Hangover That Won't Go Away
by Doug Henwood · 9 May 2005 · 306pp · 78,893 words
Wall Street: How It Works And for Whom
by Doug Henwood · 30 Aug 1998 · 586pp · 159,901 words
AI 2041: Ten Visions for Our Future
by Kai-Fu Lee and Qiufan Chen · 13 Sep 2021
Arriving Today: From Factory to Front Door -- Why Everything Has Changed About How and What We Buy
by Christopher Mims · 13 Sep 2021 · 385pp · 112,842 words
From eternity to here: the quest for the ultimate theory of time
by Sean M. Carroll · 15 Jan 2010 · 634pp · 185,116 words
24/7: Late Capitalism and the Ends of Sleep
by Jonathan Crary · 3 Jun 2013 · 102pp · 33,345 words
The Immortalization Commission: Science and the Strange Quest to Cheat Death
by John Gray · 11 Apr 2011 · 232pp · 67,934 words
Transaction Man: The Rise of the Deal and the Decline of the American Dream
by Nicholas Lemann · 9 Sep 2019 · 354pp · 118,970 words
The Hidden Wealth of Nations: The Scourge of Tax Havens
by Gabriel Zucman, Teresa Lavender Fagan and Thomas Piketty · 21 Sep 2015 · 121pp · 34,193 words
Why Things Bite Back: Technology and the Revenge of Unintended Consequences
by Edward Tenner · 1 Sep 1997
Boom: Bubbles and the End of Stagnation
by Byrne Hobart and Tobias Huber · 29 Oct 2024 · 292pp · 106,826 words
Making Sense of Chaos: A Better Economics for a Better World
by J. Doyne Farmer · 24 Apr 2024 · 406pp · 114,438 words
Doughnut Economics: Seven Ways to Think Like a 21st-Century Economist
by Kate Raworth · 22 Mar 2017 · 403pp · 111,119 words
Picnic Comma Lightning: In Search of a New Reality
by Laurence Scott · 11 Jul 2018 · 244pp · 81,334 words
Lifespan: Why We Age—and Why We Don't Have To
by David A. Sinclair and Matthew D. Laplante · 9 Sep 2019
Ghost Road: Beyond the Driverless Car
by Anthony M. Townsend · 15 Jun 2020 · 362pp · 97,288 words
Utopias: A Brief History From Ancient Writings to Virtual Communities
by Howard P. Segal · 20 May 2012 · 299pp · 19,560 words
Rebooting India: Realizing a Billion Aspirations
by Nandan Nilekani · 4 Feb 2016 · 332pp · 100,601 words
Elsewhere, U.S.A: How We Got From the Company Man, Family Dinners, and the Affluent Society to the Home Office, BlackBerry Moms,and Economic Anxiety
by Dalton Conley · 27 Dec 2008 · 204pp · 67,922 words
Surfaces and Essences
by Douglas Hofstadter and Emmanuel Sander · 10 Sep 2012 · 1,079pp · 321,718 words
Rethinking Capitalism: Economics and Policy for Sustainable and Inclusive Growth
by Michael Jacobs and Mariana Mazzucato · 31 Jul 2016 · 370pp · 102,823 words
How the City Really Works: The Definitive Guide to Money and Investing in London's Square Mile
by Alexander Davidson · 1 Apr 2008 · 368pp · 32,950 words
Shadow of the Silk Road
by Colin Thubron · 1 Jan 2006 · 419pp · 124,522 words
Thinking in Numbers
by Daniel Tammet · 15 Aug 2012 · 212pp · 68,754 words
The Divide: A Brief Guide to Global Inequality and Its Solutions
by Jason Hickel · 3 May 2017 · 332pp · 106,197 words
Think Like an Engineer: Use Systematic Thinking to Solve Everyday Challenges & Unlock the Inherent Values in Them
by Mushtak Al-Atabi · 26 Aug 2014 · 204pp · 66,619 words
The Intelligence Trap: Revolutionise Your Thinking and Make Wiser Decisions
by David Robson · 7 Mar 2019 · 417pp · 103,458 words
Fully Automated Luxury Communism
by Aaron Bastani · 10 Jun 2019 · 280pp · 74,559 words
Algorithms to Live By: The Computer Science of Human Decisions
by Brian Christian and Tom Griffiths · 4 Apr 2016 · 523pp · 143,139 words
The Story of Stuff: The Impact of Overconsumption on the Planet, Our Communities, and Our Health-And How We Can Make It Better
by Annie Leonard · 22 Feb 2011 · 538pp · 138,544 words
The Rapture of the Nerds
by Cory Doctorow and Charles Stross · 3 Sep 2012 · 311pp · 94,732 words
Surviving AI: The Promise and Peril of Artificial Intelligence
by Calum Chace · 28 Jul 2015 · 144pp · 43,356 words
There Is No Planet B: A Handbook for the Make or Break Years
by Mike Berners-Lee · 27 Feb 2019
Filterworld: How Algorithms Flattened Culture
by Kyle Chayka · 15 Jan 2024 · 321pp · 105,480 words
Narcotopia
by Patrick Winn · 30 Jan 2024 · 425pp · 131,864 words
Ready Player One
by Ernest Cline · 15 Feb 2011 · 458pp · 137,960 words
The Future We Choose: Surviving the Climate Crisis
by Christiana Figueres and Tom Rivett-Carnac · 25 Feb 2020 · 197pp · 49,296 words
Life on the Edge: The Coming of Age of Quantum Biology
by Johnjoe McFadden and Jim Al-Khalili · 14 Oct 2014 · 476pp · 120,892 words
Debt: The First 5,000 Years
by David Graeber · 1 Jan 2010 · 725pp · 221,514 words
The End of Growth: Adapting to Our New Economic Reality
by Richard Heinberg · 1 Jun 2011 · 372pp · 107,587 words
Hollow City
by Rebecca Solnit and Susan Schwartzenberg · 1 Jan 2001
Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television
by Jerry Mander · 1 Jan 1977
The Stack: On Software and Sovereignty
by Benjamin H. Bratton · 19 Feb 2016 · 903pp · 235,753 words
The Grid: The Fraying Wires Between Americans and Our Energy Future
by Gretchen Bakke · 25 Jul 2016 · 433pp · 127,171 words
Broad Band: The Untold Story of the Women Who Made the Internet
by Claire L. Evans · 6 Mar 2018 · 371pp · 93,570 words
Capitalism, Alone: The Future of the System That Rules the World
by Branko Milanovic · 23 Sep 2019
The Other Side of Happiness: Embracing a More Fearless Approach to Living
by Brock Bastian · 25 Jan 2018
The Dreaming Void
by Peter F. Hamilton · 1 Jan 2007 · 773pp · 214,465 words
The Dream of Europe: Travels in the Twenty-First Century
by Geert Mak · 27 Oct 2021 · 722pp · 223,701 words
Work Won't Love You Back: How Devotion to Our Jobs Keeps Us Exploited, Exhausted, and Alone
by Sarah Jaffe · 26 Jan 2021 · 490pp · 153,455 words
Money in the Metaverse: Digital Assets, Online Identities, Spatial Computing and Why Virtual Worlds Mean Real Business
by David G. W. Birch and Victoria Richardson · 28 Apr 2024 · 249pp · 74,201 words
Makers
by Chris Anderson · 1 Oct 2012 · 238pp · 73,824 words
How PowerPoint Makes You Stupid
by Franck Frommer · 6 Oct 2010 · 255pp · 68,829 words
This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate
by Naomi Klein · 15 Sep 2014 · 829pp · 229,566 words
I Am Charlotte Simmons: A Novel
by Tom Wolfe · 9 Nov 2004
Breakfast of Champions
by Kurt Vonnegut · 15 Mar 1999 · 209pp · 58,466 words
Leading From the Emerging Future: From Ego-System to Eco-System Economies
by Otto Scharmer and Katrin Kaufer · 14 Apr 2013 · 351pp · 93,982 words
Roads: An Anthropology of Infrastructure and Expertise (Expertise: Cultures and Technologies of Knowledge)
by Penny Harvey and Hannah Knox · 22 Jun 2015 · 262pp · 73,439 words
Cooked: A Natural History of Transformation
by Michael Pollan · 22 Apr 2013 · 476pp · 148,895 words
The Revenge of Analog: Real Things and Why They Matter
by David Sax · 8 Nov 2016 · 360pp · 101,038 words
The Human Age: The World Shaped by Us
by Diane Ackerman · 9 Sep 2014 · 380pp · 104,841 words
Tesla: Man Out of Time
by Margaret Cheney · 1 Jan 1981 · 478pp · 131,657 words
The Rise of the Network Society
by Manuel Castells · 31 Aug 1996 · 843pp · 223,858 words
Beyond Weird
by Philip Ball · 22 Mar 2018 · 277pp · 87,082 words
Great North Road
by Peter F. Hamilton · 26 Sep 2012 · 1,266pp · 344,635 words
Ayn Rand Cult
by Jeff Walker · 30 Dec 1998 · 525pp · 146,126 words
B Is for Bauhaus, Y Is for YouTube: Designing the Modern World From a to Z
by Deyan Sudjic · 17 Feb 2015 · 335pp · 111,405 words
The Mysterious Mr. Nakamoto: A Fifteen-Year Quest to Unmask the Secret Genius Behind Crypto
by Benjamin Wallace · 18 Mar 2025 · 431pp · 116,274 words
On Breathing
by Jamieson Webster · 20 Feb 2025 · 198pp · 63,059 words
Energy and Civilization: A History
by Vaclav Smil · 11 May 2017
Speaking Code: Coding as Aesthetic and Political Expression
by Geoff Cox and Alex McLean · 9 Nov 2012
The World Beyond Your Head: On Becoming an Individual in an Age of Distraction
by Matthew B. Crawford · 29 Mar 2015 · 351pp · 100,791 words
Vagabonding: An Uncommon Guide to the Art of Long-Term World Travel
by Rolf Potts · 24 Dec 2002 · 168pp · 47,972 words
The Long Boom: A Vision for the Coming Age of Prosperity
by Peter Schwartz, Peter Leyden and Joel Hyatt · 18 Oct 2000 · 353pp · 355 words
Architecture: A Very Short Introduction
by Andrew Ballantyne · 19 Dec 2002 · 162pp · 42,595 words
Democracy Incorporated
by Sheldon S. Wolin · 7 Apr 2008 · 637pp · 128,673 words
The Patterning Instinct: A Cultural History of Humanity's Search for Meaning
by Jeremy Lent · 22 May 2017 · 789pp · 207,744 words
The Rise and Fall of the British Nation: A Twentieth-Century History
by David Edgerton · 27 Jun 2018
Hotel Du Lac
by Anita Brookner · 14 May 1993 · 153pp · 50,724 words
A Thread of Violence: A Story of Truth, Invention, and Murder
by Mark O'Connell · 27 Jun 2023 · 245pp · 82,536 words
The Fabric of the Cosmos
by Brian Greene · 1 Jan 2003 · 695pp · 219,110 words
Eon
by Greg Bear · 2 Jan 1985 · 641pp · 153,921 words
The Edifice Complex: How the Rich and Powerful--And Their Architects--Shape the World
by Deyan Sudjic · 27 Nov 2006 · 441pp · 135,176 words
Cosmos
by Carl Sagan · 1 Jan 1980 · 404pp · 131,034 words
The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves
by Matt Ridley · 17 May 2010 · 462pp · 150,129 words
The Collected Stories of Vernor Vinge
by Vernor Vinge · 30 Sep 2001 · 659pp · 203,574 words
A Voyage Long and Strange: On the Trail of Vikings, Conquistadors, Lost Colonists, and Other Adventurers in Early America
by Tony Horwitz · 1 Jan 2008
Physics in Mind: A Quantum View of the Brain
by Werner Loewenstein · 29 Jan 2013 · 362pp · 97,862 words
Building and Dwelling: Ethics for the City
by Richard Sennett · 9 Apr 2018
Tribe of Mentors: Short Life Advice From the Best in the World
by Timothy Ferriss · 14 Jun 2017 · 579pp · 183,063 words
The Next Great Migration: The Beauty and Terror of Life on the Move
by Sonia Shah
Polaroids From the Dead
by Douglas Coupland · 1 Jan 1996
Bit Rot
by Douglas Coupland · 4 Oct 2016
The 5 AM Club: Own Your Morning. Elevate Your Life.
by Robin Sharma · 4 Dec 2018 · 325pp · 97,162 words
Adriatic: A Concert of Civilizations at the End of the Modern Age
by Robert D. Kaplan · 11 Apr 2022 · 500pp · 115,119 words