Chapter 14.1 Tech and Energy
In what ways was technology a major driver of economic and social change during the past century?
Nuclear weapons, antibiotics, electrical grids, and the internet were created in Western Europe, the US, and Japan - where the Industrial Revolution first took shape.
Early industrialization in these nations fostered wealth, keeping them as the mass pushers of innovation in the century.
After WWII: universities, governments, and corporations drove technological and scientific innovation
Universities’ research provide the knowledge needed to accelerate technology.
Innovation was accelerated during wartime anxiety (new medicine, weaponry, and communications) and often became adopted by citizens.
Large multinational corporations invest in new products, driving consumer demand.
Globalization allowed innovations and products to spread rapidly worldwide.
Since the Industrial Revolution, energy has been shifted from the means of using wood, wind, the sun, and animals, to fossil fuels — coal, oil, and natural gas.
Coal was used to fuel industrialized economies in the 19th century, but it wasn’t until the 20th c. until its consumption skyrocketed.
The Age of Fossil Fuels was this shift in energy production, allowing for the widespread availability of electricity and the internal combustion engine.
Oil overtook coal by the 1960s.
Fossil Fuels fueled 80 percent of the energy needed to fuel a global economy.
New tech allowed for society to actually utilize fossil fuels, a change gradually taken into effect following the industrial revolution.
Developments in coal, oil, and electricity (alternating current, transformers, batteries) allowed for the commercialization of electricity.
What was new about energy production (EQ) ?
Technological developments allowed for the utilization of fossil fuels for the energy needed to fuel a globalizing economy. These developments, mainly in coal, oil, and most notably electricity (through city-wide electric grids) allowed for the commercialization of electricity in a now-global process known as electrification. Electrification enabled the masses of the world to obtain efficient energy, showing a rapid transition to new ways of living and also
Electric grids generated power and transmitted it widely across towns and cities.
Spread to some 85 percent of the world’s population— in capitalist, colonial, communist, and developing countries.
Was easy in Europe, Russia, North America, and Japan.
It took China, North Africa, Latin America, and parts of India (the Global South!) longer to achieve that statistic.
Electrification allowed changes for regular citizens in society.
Allowed for more students to study and people to work — Electric motors increased citizen productivity and material-goods-based production far more than the steam engine of the First Industrial Revolution had.
Let’s review the entire Industrial Revolution because why not.
Backstory: Invented during the Industrial Revolution (1760-1840), a period in which major changes in agriculture, manufacturing, mining, and transport had major effects on the socioeconomic conditions of Europe.
INTERNAL: Allowed for the growth of urban centers like cities, the rise of the middle class of merchants and factory owners, the rising of living standards
Threatened traditional artisanry and widened the gap between industrial and nonindustrial nations, and gap between workers and the factory owners
EXTERNAL: Created greater economic power in Europe and later the U.S., creating competition for colonial territory to secure natural resources — the rape of Africa.
Pushed the rise of Capitalism and global trade.
Preconditions for Industrialization:
England had access to the Atlantic ocean, and had plenty of natural resources domestically (Rivers, coal, iron ore).
Powered factories, and coal helped workers produce iron to make new kinds of machinery, showing how it drove technological development.
New methods for iron production lowered the cost for railroad construction.
England had a huge business class that grew wealthy through commerce, especially in the Transatlantic slave trade, allowing them to reinvest profits into industrialization.
Countries needed agricultural advances to feed people and industrialize, so the Dutch and British had an Agricultural Revolution with crop rotation, selective breeding, and a more productive use of fertile land.
Effects on the Environment:
Air and water pollution affected the health of people who lived or migrated to cities
Destroyed landscapes as humans cut down timber for usable land, and razed hills/mountains for ores.
Improved firearms led to the near-extinction of hunted animals.
Effects on Finance:
New stock markets and insurance allowed businessmen to raise their capital
Transnational Corporations, like the United Fruit Company economically imperialized parts of Latin America.
Pushed the influence of laissez-faire Capitalism that Adam Smith had proposed in the Wealth of Nations.
Effects, social:
Women and children entered the industrial workforce as low-paid laborers.
The status of men increased because of this transition to industrial work.
Middle class values became separate from the laborers, the latter considered to be immoral and dissentious by the middle class.
Middle class women were forced into a “cult of domesticity” — the glorification of women kept in the center and leisure of the well-kept home, not even to do domestic work as they had previously done.
The Factory system increased profits and productivity, but was dangerous and had a negative impact on the health of laborers.
Responses to Industrialization:
Socialism was created, criticizing capitalism and suggested that the economy be run by the proletariat, rather than the bourgeoisie (the class of businessmen that rose after the decline of aristocrats)
Inspired many leftist revolutionaries, like Lenin from the Russian Revolution.
Liberalism, rooted in the Enlightenment, opposed monarchies and wanted written constitutions based on the separation of powers. Supported laissez-faire capitalism.
Unionism was more reformist, wanting to improve laborers under capitalism rather than overthrow the system. Advocated for the combining of workers for the negotiation of better wages and working conditions.
Communism was a radical far-left form of Socialism that was created by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in 1848 (Communist Manifesto), wanting the centralization of a worker-run state. When it was applied in the USSR and PRC, it came to be associated with trhe central planning of the economy by the government.
Anarchism was a revolutionary antiauthoritarian movement founded in France.
Romanticism was a philosophical reaction to the Enlightenment and Ind. Rev., emphasizing emotion over reason and glorified individualism over the collective.
Strongly associated with Nationalism, and provided a basis for fascism in the 20th.
Conservatism was the aristocratic response, favoring private property and laissez-faire economics.
Now the Steam Engine:
Used to power the steam locomotive and steamboats, greatly increasing domestic and international migration as well as urbanization, as well as the shipment of resources and goods.
The Internal Combustion Engine
Made in the late 19th century and widely pushed in the late 20th century.
Created a huge new oil industry that effectively replaced horses with new ways of movement through diesel automobiles.
Also applied during the World Wars through war machines - fighter jets, tanks, and subs used it.
It allowed for the more rapid and efficient movement of goods and people.
Became a huge source for greenhouse gases, driving climate change.
World Energy consumption
20th century technological infrastructure:
Building upon the developments of railroads and steamships were automobiles and supertankers, allowing for a stronger surging of goods and people through globalization.
Cars, buses, and trucks were automobiles that became widely consumed by the public.
This was thanks to America’s democratization of the Model T and the growing availability of cheap gasoline.
Cars also became a symbol of status and freedom for individuals
Cars and road infrastructure geographically geographically united nations.
Integrated remote rural areas firmly into a nation.
Cars thus facilitated the growth of huge suburbs, generating air pollution and traffic jams.
The Communication Revolution: modern transformation from the 19th century to the present.
Began in the 19th c. with the electric telegraph and telephone
20th c. vacuum tubes, transistors, microprocessors, and fiber-optic cables enabled radios, videos, televisions, and most recently computers, cell phones, and the Internet.
Became popular among developing countries worldwide. In most of Latin America, North Africa, the Middle East, and East Asia, 90 percent have TVs in the early 21st c.
The internet has connected over half of the global population by 2017 through web browsers
Cell phones make it easy for African developing countries to connect cheaply in contrast to expensive traditional landlines.
Effects of this:
Radio allows people of all classes and situations to become aware of international events
Were deemed helpful by Hitler and FDR to address their nations and maintain power during the Great Depression and World War II
Were deemed threatening to nations who sought to censor information, as in the Soviet Union, contributing to the fall of Communist rule in that country.
PCs and their uses have made it easy in the Western nations to engage in the technological revolution during the 1980s.
Education, business, and economics have been elevated, but also grown reliant on computers.
Commerce and industry has been elevated in many countries.
Informational tech has grown to be a concern due to suspicions of government or corporal involvement in personal information as well as its vulnerability to breaches.
The World Wars had their scale of civilian deaths elevated by machine guns, explosives, fighter jets, submarines, tanks, atomic bombs, and radios.
The Cold War developed and studied upon energy forms to develop more tactical nuclear weapons like hydrogen bombs
These military technologies have been utilized by civilization for radar, nuclear energy, satellites, and the Internet.
In what ways was technology a major driver of economic and social change during the past century?
Nuclear weapons, antibiotics, electrical grids, and the internet were created in Western Europe, the US, and Japan - where the Industrial Revolution first took shape.
Early industrialization in these nations fostered wealth, keeping them as the mass pushers of innovation in the century.
After WWII: universities, governments, and corporations drove technological and scientific innovation
Universities’ research provide the knowledge needed to accelerate technology.
Innovation was accelerated during wartime anxiety (new medicine, weaponry, and communications) and often became adopted by citizens.
Large multinational corporations invest in new products, driving consumer demand.
Globalization allowed innovations and products to spread rapidly worldwide.
Since the Industrial Revolution, energy has been shifted from the means of using wood, wind, the sun, and animals, to fossil fuels — coal, oil, and natural gas.
Coal was used to fuel industrialized economies in the 19th century, but it wasn’t until the 20th c. until its consumption skyrocketed.
The Age of Fossil Fuels was this shift in energy production, allowing for the widespread availability of electricity and the internal combustion engine.
Oil overtook coal by the 1960s.
Fossil Fuels fueled 80 percent of the energy needed to fuel a global economy.
New tech allowed for society to actually utilize fossil fuels, a change gradually taken into effect following the industrial revolution.
Developments in coal, oil, and electricity (alternating current, transformers, batteries) allowed for the commercialization of electricity.
What was new about energy production (EQ) ?
Technological developments allowed for the utilization of fossil fuels for the energy needed to fuel a globalizing economy. These developments, mainly in coal, oil, and most notably electricity (through city-wide electric grids) allowed for the commercialization of electricity in a now-global process known as electrification. Electrification enabled the masses of the world to obtain efficient energy, showing a rapid transition to new ways of living and also
Electric grids generated power and transmitted it widely across towns and cities.
Spread to some 85 percent of the world’s population— in capitalist, colonial, communist, and developing countries.
Was easy in Europe, Russia, North America, and Japan.
It took China, North Africa, Latin America, and parts of India (the Global South!) longer to achieve that statistic.
Electrification allowed changes for regular citizens in society.
Allowed for more students to study and people to work — Electric motors increased citizen productivity and material-goods-based production far more than the steam engine of the First Industrial Revolution had.
Let’s review the entire Industrial Revolution because why not.
Backstory: Invented during the Industrial Revolution (1760-1840), a period in which major changes in agriculture, manufacturing, mining, and transport had major effects on the socioeconomic conditions of Europe.
INTERNAL: Allowed for the growth of urban centers like cities, the rise of the middle class of merchants and factory owners, the rising of living standards
Threatened traditional artisanry and widened the gap between industrial and nonindustrial nations, and gap between workers and the factory owners
EXTERNAL: Created greater economic power in Europe and later the U.S., creating competition for colonial territory to secure natural resources — the rape of Africa.
Pushed the rise of Capitalism and global trade.
Preconditions for Industrialization:
England had access to the Atlantic ocean, and had plenty of natural resources domestically (Rivers, coal, iron ore).
Powered factories, and coal helped workers produce iron to make new kinds of machinery, showing how it drove technological development.
New methods for iron production lowered the cost for railroad construction.
England had a huge business class that grew wealthy through commerce, especially in the Transatlantic slave trade, allowing them to reinvest profits into industrialization.
Countries needed agricultural advances to feed people and industrialize, so the Dutch and British had an Agricultural Revolution with crop rotation, selective breeding, and a more productive use of fertile land.
Effects on the Environment:
Air and water pollution affected the health of people who lived or migrated to cities
Destroyed landscapes as humans cut down timber for usable land, and razed hills/mountains for ores.
Improved firearms led to the near-extinction of hunted animals.
Effects on Finance:
New stock markets and insurance allowed businessmen to raise their capital
Transnational Corporations, like the United Fruit Company economically imperialized parts of Latin America.
Pushed the influence of laissez-faire Capitalism that Adam Smith had proposed in the Wealth of Nations.
Effects, social:
Women and children entered the industrial workforce as low-paid laborers.
The status of men increased because of this transition to industrial work.
Middle class values became separate from the laborers, the latter considered to be immoral and dissentious by the middle class.
Middle class women were forced into a “cult of domesticity” — the glorification of women kept in the center and leisure of the well-kept home, not even to do domestic work as they had previously done.
The Factory system increased profits and productivity, but was dangerous and had a negative impact on the health of laborers.
Responses to Industrialization:
Socialism was created, criticizing capitalism and suggested that the economy be run by the proletariat, rather than the bourgeoisie (the class of businessmen that rose after the decline of aristocrats)
Inspired many leftist revolutionaries, like Lenin from the Russian Revolution.
Liberalism, rooted in the Enlightenment, opposed monarchies and wanted written constitutions based on the separation of powers. Supported laissez-faire capitalism.
Unionism was more reformist, wanting to improve laborers under capitalism rather than overthrow the system. Advocated for the combining of workers for the negotiation of better wages and working conditions.
Communism was a radical far-left form of Socialism that was created by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in 1848 (Communist Manifesto), wanting the centralization of a worker-run state. When it was applied in the USSR and PRC, it came to be associated with trhe central planning of the economy by the government.
Anarchism was a revolutionary antiauthoritarian movement founded in France.
Romanticism was a philosophical reaction to the Enlightenment and Ind. Rev., emphasizing emotion over reason and glorified individualism over the collective.
Strongly associated with Nationalism, and provided a basis for fascism in the 20th.
Conservatism was the aristocratic response, favoring private property and laissez-faire economics.
Now the Steam Engine:
Used to power the steam locomotive and steamboats, greatly increasing domestic and international migration as well as urbanization, as well as the shipment of resources and goods.
The Internal Combustion Engine
Made in the late 19th century and widely pushed in the late 20th century.
Created a huge new oil industry that effectively replaced horses with new ways of movement through diesel automobiles.
Also applied during the World Wars through war machines - fighter jets, tanks, and subs used it.
It allowed for the more rapid and efficient movement of goods and people.
Became a huge source for greenhouse gases, driving climate change.
World Energy consumption
20th century technological infrastructure:
Building upon the developments of railroads and steamships were automobiles and supertankers, allowing for a stronger surging of goods and people through globalization.
Cars, buses, and trucks were automobiles that became widely consumed by the public.
This was thanks to America’s democratization of the Model T and the growing availability of cheap gasoline.
Cars also became a symbol of status and freedom for individuals
Cars and road infrastructure geographically geographically united nations.
Integrated remote rural areas firmly into a nation.
Cars thus facilitated the growth of huge suburbs, generating air pollution and traffic jams.
The Communication Revolution: modern transformation from the 19th century to the present.
Began in the 19th c. with the electric telegraph and telephone
20th c. vacuum tubes, transistors, microprocessors, and fiber-optic cables enabled radios, videos, televisions, and most recently computers, cell phones, and the Internet.
Became popular among developing countries worldwide. In most of Latin America, North Africa, the Middle East, and East Asia, 90 percent have TVs in the early 21st c.
The internet has connected over half of the global population by 2017 through web browsers
Cell phones make it easy for African developing countries to connect cheaply in contrast to expensive traditional landlines.
Effects of this:
Radio allows people of all classes and situations to become aware of international events
Were deemed helpful by Hitler and FDR to address their nations and maintain power during the Great Depression and World War II
Were deemed threatening to nations who sought to censor information, as in the Soviet Union, contributing to the fall of Communist rule in that country.
PCs and their uses have made it easy in the Western nations to engage in the technological revolution during the 1980s.
Education, business, and economics have been elevated, but also grown reliant on computers.
Commerce and industry has been elevated in many countries.
Informational tech has grown to be a concern due to suspicions of government or corporal involvement in personal information as well as its vulnerability to breaches.
The World Wars had their scale of civilian deaths elevated by machine guns, explosives, fighter jets, submarines, tanks, atomic bombs, and radios.
The Cold War developed and studied upon energy forms to develop more tactical nuclear weapons like hydrogen bombs
These military technologies have been utilized by civilization for radar, nuclear energy, satellites, and the Internet.
