invention of the steam engine

Thank You for Being Late: An Optimist's Guide to Thriving in the Age of Accelerations

by Thomas L. Friedman  · 22 Nov 2016  · 602pp  · 177,874 words

Machine Age: Work, Progress, and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies. The first machine age, they argued, was the Industrial Revolution, which accompanied the invention of the steam engine in the 1700s. This period was “all about power systems to augment human muscle,” explained McAfee in an interview, “and each successive invention in that

Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks From the Stone Age to AI

by Yuval Noah Harari  · 9 Sep 2024  · 566pp  · 169,013 words

sorcerers are themselves a human invention—just like chariots, brooms, and algorithms. The tendency to create powerful things with unintended consequences started not with the invention of the steam engine or AI but with the invention of religion. Prophets and theologians have repeatedly summoned powerful spirits that were supposed to bring love and joy but

The Digital Divide: Arguments for and Against Facebook, Google, Texting, and the Age of Social Netwo Rking

by Mark Bauerlein  · 7 Sep 2011  · 407pp  · 103,501 words

new regime, claiming that it turned them into little more than automatons, but the factory’s productivity soared. More than a hundred years after the invention of the steam engine, the Industrial Revolution had at last found its philosophy and its philosopher. Taylor’s tight industrial choreography—his “system,” as he liked to call it

Money Changes Everything: How Finance Made Civilization Possible

by William N. Goetzmann  · 11 Apr 2016  · 695pp  · 194,693 words

differential in financial development between China and the West preceded the differences in technological advancement. European financial markets did not suddenly spring up with the invention of the steam engine and the mechanization of manufacturing processes. By the time of the Industrial Revolution in Europe, commercial banks and organized securities exchanges had existed for at

In Our Own Image: Savior or Destroyer? The History and Future of Artificial Intelligence

by George Zarkadakis  · 7 Mar 2016  · 405pp  · 117,219 words

these data encapsulate, are taking the world economy into a new era increasingly called ‘the second machine age’.1 The ‘first age’ occurred when the invention of the steam engine multiplied humanity’s capacity for manual labour. In the ‘second age’ the computer multiplies our capacity for mental labour. As computers increasingly become more ‘intelligent

Utopia Is Creepy: And Other Provocations

by Nicholas Carr  · 5 Sep 2016  · 391pp  · 105,382 words

new regime, claiming that it turned them into little more than automatons, but the factory’s productivity soared. More than a hundred years after the invention of the steam engine, the industrial revolution had at last found its philosophy and its philosopher. Taylor’s tight industrial choreography—his “system,” as he liked to call it

How We Got Here: A Slightly Irreverent History of Technology and Markets

by Andy Kessler  · 13 Jun 2005  · 218pp  · 63,471 words

. The Holy Grail for scientists at the time was to solve differential equations. Astronomers who studied the skies needed differential equations to predict orbits. The invention of the steam engine would have gone a lot faster if James Watt had been able to solve differentials in Isaac Newton’s law of cooling. Newton stated that

Nuts and Bolts: Seven Small Inventions That Changed the World (In a Big Way)

by Roma Agrawal  · 2 Mar 2023  · 290pp  · 80,461 words

, because of its ‘cranked’ shape, it pulls the rods back and forth in a line compressing gas or fuel. This technology was central to the invention of the steam engine and car engine; without it, our world wouldn’t look the same. Our need for and dependence on water has meant that a lot of

Volt Rush: The Winners and Losers in the Race to Go Green

by Henry Sanderson  · 12 Sep 2022  · 292pp  · 87,720 words

China had been a leader in the global economy thanks to ironware and the ‘four great inventions’: papermaking, printing, gunpowder and the compass. But the invention of the steam engine in the eighteenth century had caused the UK to become a global factory and China to ‘miss an opportunity, and to decline from a peak

Human Frontiers: The Future of Big Ideas in an Age of Small Thinking

by Michael Bhaskar  · 2 Nov 2021

, and contrary to the popular myth that everything flows down from ivory towers, tinkerers and tools often open the spaces for new insights.18 The invention of the steam engine preceded the understanding of the laws of thermodynamics upon which it relies. Vaccination preceded the knowledge of antibodies. Pasteur was as much motivated by the

Whole Earth Discipline: An Ecopragmatist Manifesto

by Stewart Brand  · 15 Mar 2009  · 422pp  · 113,525 words

The Relentless Revolution: A History of Capitalism

by Joyce Appleby  · 22 Dec 2009  · 540pp  · 168,921 words

The New New Thing: A Silicon Valley Story

by Michael Lewis  · 29 Sep 1999  · 146pp  · 43,446 words

The Invention of Science: A New History of the Scientific Revolution

by David Wootton  · 7 Dec 2015  · 1,197pp  · 304,245 words

The Ages of Globalization

by Jeffrey D. Sachs  · 2 Jun 2020

The Empathic Civilization: The Race to Global Consciousness in a World in Crisis

by Jeremy Rifkin  · 31 Dec 2009  · 879pp  · 233,093 words

Wired for War: The Robotics Revolution and Conflict in the 21st Century

by P. W. Singer  · 1 Jan 2010  · 797pp  · 227,399 words

The Technology Trap: Capital, Labor, and Power in the Age of Automation

by Carl Benedikt Frey  · 17 Jun 2019  · 626pp  · 167,836 words

Slouching Towards Utopia: An Economic History of the Twentieth Century

by J. Bradford Delong  · 6 Apr 2020  · 593pp  · 183,240 words

Energy: A Human History

by Richard Rhodes  · 28 May 2018  · 653pp  · 155,847 words

Firepower: How Weapons Shaped Warfare

by Paul Lockhart  · 15 Mar 2021

Good Money: Birmingham Button Makers, the Royal Mint, and the Beginnings of Modern Coinage, 1775-1821

by George Anthony Selgin  · 13 Jul 2008  · 386pp

Common Wealth: Economics for a Crowded Planet

by Jeffrey Sachs  · 1 Jan 2008  · 421pp  · 125,417 words

Early Retirement Extreme

by Jacob Lund Fisker  · 30 Sep 2010  · 346pp  · 102,625 words

The Rise of the Network Society

by Manuel Castells  · 31 Aug 1996  · 843pp  · 223,858 words

Andrew Carnegie

by David Nasaw  · 15 Nov 2007  · 1,230pp  · 357,848 words

The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity

by David Graeber and David Wengrow  · 18 Oct 2021

The God Species: Saving the Planet in the Age of Humans

by Mark Lynas  · 3 Oct 2011  · 369pp  · 98,776 words

Capital in the Twenty-First Century

by Thomas Piketty  · 10 Mar 2014  · 935pp  · 267,358 words

This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate

by Naomi Klein  · 15 Sep 2014  · 829pp  · 229,566 words

The Corruption of Capitalism: Why Rentiers Thrive and Work Does Not Pay

by Guy Standing  · 13 Jul 2016  · 443pp  · 98,113 words

Capitalism and Its Critics: A History: From the Industrial Revolution to AI

by John Cassidy  · 12 May 2025  · 774pp  · 238,244 words

Material World: A Substantial Story of Our Past and Future

by Ed Conway  · 15 Jun 2023  · 515pp  · 152,128 words

Plutocrats: The Rise of the New Global Super-Rich and the Fall of Everyone Else

by Chrystia Freeland  · 11 Oct 2012  · 481pp  · 120,693 words

Less Is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World

by Jason Hickel  · 12 Aug 2020  · 286pp  · 87,168 words

The Misfit Economy: Lessons in Creativity From Pirates, Hackers, Gangsters and Other Informal Entrepreneurs

by Alexa Clay and Kyra Maya Phillips  · 23 Jun 2015  · 210pp  · 56,667 words

Seventeen Contradictions and the End of Capitalism

by David Harvey  · 3 Apr 2014  · 464pp  · 116,945 words

Land: How the Hunger for Ownership Shaped the Modern World

by Simon Winchester  · 19 Jan 2021  · 486pp  · 139,713 words

The Third Pillar: How Markets and the State Leave the Community Behind

by Raghuram Rajan  · 26 Feb 2019  · 596pp  · 163,682 words

Riding for Deliveroo: Resistance in the New Economy

by Callum Cant  · 11 Nov 2019  · 196pp  · 55,862 words

Startup Weekend: How to Take a Company From Concept to Creation in 54 Hours

by Marc Nager, Clint Nelsen and Franck Nouyrigat  · 8 Nov 2011  · 179pp  · 42,006 words

Status Anxiety

by Alain de Botton  · 1 Jan 2004  · 187pp  · 58,839 words

The Great Surge: The Ascent of the Developing World

by Steven Radelet  · 10 Nov 2015  · 437pp  · 115,594 words

The People vs. Democracy: Why Our Freedom Is in Danger and How to Save It

by Yascha Mounk  · 15 Feb 2018  · 497pp  · 123,778 words

Deep Time Reckoning: How Future Thinking Can Help Earth Now

by Vincent Ialenti  · 22 Sep 2020  · 224pp  · 69,593 words

The Future of Fusion Energy

by Jason Parisi and Justin Ball  · 18 Dec 2018  · 404pp  · 107,356 words

Halting State

by Charles Stross  · 9 Jul 2011  · 350pp  · 107,834 words

The Enigma of Capital: And the Crises of Capitalism

by David Harvey  · 1 Jan 2010  · 369pp  · 94,588 words

Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals

by Oliver Burkeman  · 9 Aug 2021  · 206pp  · 68,757 words

The Fourth Industrial Revolution

by Klaus Schwab  · 11 Jan 2016  · 179pp  · 43,441 words