Archive for June 2015

A new Industrial Revolution?

I’ve written before about the history of steel, how it’s been around for millennia, but was of limited use to civilization as a whole until the details of its manufacture were published.  It’s impossible to overstate what a pivotal moment in human history the publication of steel was: without abundant, cheep steel manufacturing, we would have never had the Industrial Revolution, the beginning of the modern age.

Since then, there’s only been one technology that’s rivaled steel in its revolutionary influence on the entirety of modern society: the transistor.  And again, the more abundantly and cheaply people have been able to manufacture them, the greater their value to society grows.  We even have a famous principle about the mathematics of it.

Well here’s the amazing thing: we might be right on the verge of it happening again. Continue reading ‘A new Industrial Revolution?’ »