Stuff that works

Have you ever seen one of those documentaries about how they make things? It’s fascinating. They show you how a door handle or a golf club go through the factory floors and are made into their finished forms with perfect expertise. That is the magic of the Industrial Revolution. If we walked in a Medieval room we would find out that all the things in that room would have been made at most by a dozen people. There would be a table or a chair made by a carpenter. And a basket made by a weaver. And the kids clothes would have been made by their mothers. And most of these things would have been made by people our host would know personally. Yet, today, in our own living rooms we find the work of thousands of people, separated by thousands of miles and many years. That’s what the Industrial Revolution brought us: the ability to benefit from the work of many other people, and for many other people to benefit from our work.

Imagine we had a very knowledgeable and cult man who would go to another planet where mankind would still be in Medieval times – it would be impossible to him to replicate the Industrial Revolution. We can get that sense by looking at the documentaries I was talking about: the sheer amount of expertise, know-how, intelligence, information, training, organization that goes into each industrial process is staggering.

However, the Industrial Revolution also brought us a lot of things we could do without. Waste. Pollution. Some injustice, some trouble. But I guess none of us would want to go back to agriculture and to making our own shoes. So there must be another way. I am positive that we will find it.