by Al Gore
88 increased significantly over much of that period
John E. Tilton and Hans H. Landsberg, September 1997, “Innovation, Productivity Growth, and the Survival of the U.S. Copper Industry,” Resources for the Future, http://www.rff.org/RFF/Documents/RFF-DP-97-41.pdf.
89 number of hours of labor required to produce a ton of copper fell by 50 percent
Ibid.
90 labor productivity in one of its largest mines by 400 percent
Ibid.
91 New sources of copper were developed in other countries
Matthijs Randsdorp, “A Closer Look at Copper,” November 3, 2011, TCW, https://www.tcw.com/News_and_Commentary/Market_Commentary/Insights/11-03-11_A_Closer_Look_at_Copper.aspx.
92 by 500 first-year associates
John Markoff, “Armies of Expensive Lawyers, Replaced by Cheaper Software,” New York Times, March 5, 2011.
93 300,000 miles in all driving conditions without an accident
Rebecca J. Rosen, “Google’s Self-Driving Cars: 300,000 Miles Logged, Not a Single Accident Under Computer Control,” Atlantic, August 9, 2012.
94 employed in the United States alone as taxi drivers and chauffeurs
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, as cited in the Statistical Abstract of the United States: 2010, Table 640, http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/.
95 in part for cultural reasons—to go into savings instead of consumption
Mauricio Cardenas, “Lower Savings in China Could Slow Down Growth in Latin America,” Brookings Institution, February 11, 2011, http://www.brookings.edu/research/opinions/2011/02/11-china-savings-cardenas-frank.
96 developed through the much older technologies of metallurgy and ceramics
Caltech Materials Science, “Welcome,” 2012, http://www.matsci.caltech.edu/.
97 “physical powers which will enable it to super-organize matter”
Eric Steinhart, “Teilhard de Chardin and Transhumanism,” Journal of Evolution and Technology 20, no. 1 (December 2008): 1–22.
98 the molecular economy
Christopher Meyer and Stan Davis, It’s Alive: The Coming Convergence of Information, Biology and Business (New York: Crown Business, 2003), p. 4.
99 experiments in the real world
Ibid., pp. 3–6, 66–67.
100 molecules when they are clustered in bulk
John F. Sargent Jr., “Nanotechnology: A Policy Primer,” Congressional Research Service, April 13, 2012, http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/RL34511.pdf.
101 resistance to stains, wrinkles, and fire
Ibid.
102 hospitals guarding against infections
“Nanotech-Enabled Consumer Products Continue to Rise,” ScienceDaily, March 13, 2011, http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/03/110310101351.htm.
103 copper emerged in numerous locations in the same era
Miljana Radivojevića et al., “On the Origins of Extractive Metallurgy: New Evidence from Europe,” Journal of Archaeological Science, November 2010.
104 combines high temperatures and some pressurization
Richard Cowen, “Chapter 5: The Age of Iron,” April 1999, http://mygeologypage.ucdavis.edu/cowen/~GEL115/115CH5.html.
105 more than 1,000 years later in Britain
“Bronze Age,” Encyclopaedia Britannica, http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/81017/Bronze-Age.
106 4,500 years ago in northern Turkey
Cowen, “Chapter 5: The Age of Iron.”
107 from which it could be made into tools and weapons
Ibid.
108 harder and stronger than bronze
Ibid.
109 not made until the middle of the nineteenth century
Ibid.
110 create an entirely new category of products, including
Jeremy Rifkin, The Third Industrial Revolution: How Lateral Power Is Transforming Energy, the Economy, and the World (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011).
111 store energy and manifest previously unimaginable properties
Pulickel M. Ajayan and Otto Z. Zhou, “Applications of Carbon Nanotubes,” Topics in Applied Physics 80 (2001): 391–425; Eliza Strickland, “9 Ways Carbon Nanotubes Just Might Rock the World,” Discover Magazine, August 6, 2009.
112 already replacing steel in some niche applications
Corie Lok, “Nanotechnology: Small Wonders,” Nature, September 1, 2010, pp. 18–21.
113 expected to have wide applications in industry
Dmitri Kopeliovich, “Ceramic Matrix Composites (Introduction),” SubsTech, http://www.substech.com/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=ceramic_matrix_composites_introduction.
114 already known processes, mostly in the health and fitness category
“Nanotech-Enabled Consumer Products Continue to Rise,” ScienceDaily, March 13, 2011, http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/03/110310101351.htm; Sargent, “Nanotechnology: A Policy Primer”; Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies, 2012, http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/RL34511.pdf.
115 which opens a variety of useful applications
A. K. Geim, “Graphene: Status and Prospects,” Science 324, no. 5934 (June 19, 2009): 1530–34; Matthew Finnegan, “Graphene Nanoribbons Could Extend Moore’s Law by 10 Years,” Techeye.com, September 28, 2011; “Adding Hydrogen Triples Transistor Performance in Graphene,” ScienceDaily, September 4, 2011.
116 much debate in the first years of the twenty-first century
Robert F. Service, “Nanotechnology Grows Up,” Science 304, no. 5678 (June 18, 2004): 1732–34.
117 consequent cell damage—are taken more seriously
Ibid.
118 “nothing about their synergistic impacts”
Ibid.
119 certainly since the discovery of the double helix in 1953
National Research Council, Nanotechnology in Food Products: Workshop Summary (Leslie Pray and Ann Yaktine, rapporteurs, 2009).
120 application of nanotechnology to the development of new materials
Ibid.
121 fibers with 100 times the strength and one sixth the weight of steel
Lok, “Nanotechnology: Small Wonders,” pp. 18–21.
122 until the object is formed in three-dimensional space
“The Printed World: Three-Dimensional Printing from Digital Designs Will Transform Manufacturing and Allow More People to Start Making Things,” Economist, February 10, 2011.
123 different kind of material can be used
Ibid.
124 Model T, manufacturing has been dominated by mass production
“The Third Industrial Revolution,” Economist, April 21, 2012; Peter Day, “Will 3D Printing Revolutionise Manufacturing?,” BBC, July 27, 2011, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-14282091.
125 manufacturing as profoundly as mass production did
“The Third Industrial Revolution,” Economist; Day, “Will 3D Printing Revolutionise Manufacturing?”
126 later produce en masse in more traditional processes
Day, “Will 3D Printing Revolutionise Manufacturing?”; Neil Gershenfeld, “How to Make Almost Anything,” Foreign Affairs, September 27, 2012.
127 prototyped as 3D models for wind tunnel testing
“The Printed World,” Economist.
128 builds $2,000 models and completes them overnight
Ashlee Vance, “3-D Printing Spurs a Manufacturing Revolution,” New York Times, September 14, 2010.
129 the expense of employing large numbers of people
Day, “Will 3D Printing Revolutionise Manufacturing?”; “The Third Industrial Revolution,” Economist.
130 material that is used in the mass production process
“The Printed World,” Economist; Jeremy Rifkin, “The Third Industrial Revolution: How the Internet, Green Electricity, and 3-D Printing Are Ushering in a Sustainable Era of Distributed Capitalism,” Huffington Post, March 28, 2012, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeremy-rifkin/the-third-industrial-revo_1_b_1386430.html.
131 not to mention a small frac
tion of the energy costs
“The Printed World,” Economist; Rifkin, “The Third Industrial Revolution.”
132 even as their value has increased more than threefold
Diane Coyle, introduction to The Weightless World: Strategies for Managing the Digital Economy (Oxford: Capstone, 1997).
133 unsatisfactory for many kinds of specialized products
“The Printed World,” Economist.
134 delivery of parts to the factory and finished products to distant markets
Day, “Will 3D Printing Revolutionise Manufacturing?”
135 each product to widely dispersed 3D printers
“The Third Industrial Revolution,” Economist; Gershenfeld, “How to Make Almost Anything.”
136 “warehouses waiting to be printed locally when required”
Day, “Will 3D Printing Revolutionise Manufacturing?”
137 prints an entire house in only twenty hours
Vance, “3-D Printing Spurs a Manufacturing Revolution”; Behrokh Khoshnevis, TEDx Conference presentation, February 2012.
138 in some cases, 1,000 items
“The Printed World,” Economist.
139 turning out hundreds of thousands of identical parts and products
Ibid.
140 do not have protection against replication under “useful” copyright laws
Michael Weinberg, “The DIY Copyright Revolution,” Slate, February 23, 2012, http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2012/02/_3_d_printing_copyright_and_intellectual_property_.html; “The Third Industrial Revolution,” Economist; Peter Marsh, “Made to Measure,” Financial Times, September 7, 2012.
141 United States, China, and Europe are working hard to exploit its potential
“The Printed World,” Economist.
142 printing prosthetics and other devices with medical applications
Vance, “3-D Printing Spurs a Manufacturing Revolution”; “Transplant Jaw Made by 3D Printer Claimed as First,” BBC News, February 6, 2012, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-16907104; “Engineers Pioneer Use of 3D Printer to Create New Bones,” BBC News, November 30, 2011, http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-15963467; Joann Pan, “3D Printer Creates ‘Magic Arms’ for Two-Year-Old Girl,” Mashable, August 3, 2012, http://mashable.com/2012/08/03/3d-printed-magic-arms/; “Artificial Blood Vessels Created on a 3D Printer,” BBC News, September 16, 2011, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-14946808.
143 Inexpensive 3D printers have already found their way
Vance, “3-D Printing Spurs a Manufacturing Revolution.”
144 “Something seismic is going on.”
Bob Parks, “Creation Engine: Autodesk Wants to Help Anyone, Anywhere, Make Anything,” Wired, September 21, 2012.
145 advocates of more widespread gun ownership
“3D Printers Could ‘Print Ammunition for an Army,’ ” Dezeen Magazine, October 3, 2012, http://www.dezeen.com/2012/10/03/3d-printers-could-print-ammunition-for-an-army/.
146 guns used in crimes could be easily melted down
Nick Bilton, “Disruptions: With a 3-D Printer, Building a Gun with the Push of a Button,” New York Times, October 7, 2012.
147 some of the jobs they had originally outsourced to low-wage countries
“The Third Industrial Revolution,” Economist.
148 less willing than their global counterparts to endorse either conclusion
Boston Consulting Group, press release, “Nearly a Third of Companies Say Sustainability Is Contributing to Their Profits, Says MIT Sloan Management Review–Boston Consulting Group Report,” January 24, 2012, http://www.bcg.com/media/PressReleaseDetails.aspx?id=tcm:12-96246.
149 “higher-income individuals consume, as a fraction of their income”
Joseph E. Stiglitz, “The 1 Percent’s Problem,” Vanity Fair, May 31, 2012.
150 in “extreme poverty”—defined as having an income less than $1.25 per day
World Bank, World Development Indicators, 2010 annual report, http://data.worldbank.org/sites/default/files/wdi-final.pdf.
151 every twenty-four hours into the planet’s atmosphere
Drew Shindell, phone interview with author, September 1, 2009.
152 average holding period for stocks
James Montier, Behavioural Investing: A Practitioner’s Guide to Applying Behavioural Finance (Chichester, UK: Wiley, 2007), p. 277.
153 over a business cycle and a half, roughly seven years
Richard Dobbs, Keith Leslie, and Lenny T. Mendonca, “Building the Healthy Corporation,” McKinsey Quarterly, August 2005; Roger A. Morin and Sherry L. Jarrell, Driving Shareholder Value: Value-Building Techniques for Creating Shareholder Wealth (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2001), p. 56; Roland J. Burgman, David J. Adams, David A. Light, and Joshua B. Bellin, “The Future Is Now,” MIT Sloan Management Review, October 26, 2007.
154 holding period for stocks is less than seven months
Henry Blodget, “You’re an Investor? How Quaint,” Business Insider, August 8, 2009, http://www.businessinsider.com/henry-blodget-youre-an-investor-how-quaint-2009-8.
155 “is expensive and painstaking and offers far less potential for speedy returns”
Jon Gertner, “Does America Need Manufacturing?,” New York Times Magazine, August 28, 2011.
156 Eighty percent said no
Tilde Herrera, “BSR 2011: Al Gore Says Short-Term Thinking Is ‘Functionally Insane,’ ” GreenBiz, November 2, 2011, http://www.greenbiz.com/blog/2011/11/02/bsr-2011-al-gore-says-short-term-thinking-functionally-insane.
157 almost 200 millennia
Sileshi Semaw et al., “2.6-Million-Year-Old Stone Tools and Associated Bones from OGS-6 and OGS-7, Gona, Afar, Ethiopia,” Journal of Human Evolution 45 (2003): 169–77.
158 took less than eight millennia
Graeme Barker, The Agricultural Revolution in Prehistory: Why Did Foragers Become Farmers? (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), p. v (“Ten thousand years ago there were few if any societies which can properly be described as agricultural. Five thousand years ago large numbers of the world’s population were farmers.…”).
159 from 90 to 2 percent of the workforce
Ibid.; Claude Fischer, “Can You Compete with A.I. for the Next Job?,” Fiscal Times, April 14, 2011; Carolyn Dimitri, Anne Effland, and Neilson Conklin, Economic Research Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture, “The 20th Century Transformation of U.S. Agriculture and Farm Policy,” June 2005, http://www.ers.usda.gov/publications/eib3/eib3.htm; United Nations Social Policy and Development Division, Report on the World Social Situation 2007: The Employment Imperative, 2007, http://www.un.org/esa/socdev/rwss/docs/2007/chapter1.pdf (“Agriculture still accounts for about 45 per cent of the world’s labour force, or about 1.3 billion people”).
160 less than half of all jobs worldwide are now on farms
United Nations Social Policy and Development Division, Report on the World Social Situation 2007: The Employment Imperative.
161 the Industrial Revolution took only 150 years
Barker, The Agricultural Revolution in Prehistory, p. v.
162 “indistinguishable from magic”
“Clarke’s Third Law,” in Brave New Words: The Oxford Dictionary of Science Fiction, edited by Jeff Prucher (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), p. 22.
163 different from that of our ancestors 200,000 years ago
“Human Brains Enjoy Ongoing Evolution,” New Scientist, September 9, 2005.
164 in the world thirty years ago, the Cray-2
John Markoff, “The iPad in Your Hand: As Fast as a Supercomputer of Yore,” New York Times, May 9, 2011.
165 jobs of weavers obsolete
Steven E. Jones, Against Technology: From the Luddites to Neo-Luddism (New York: Routledge, 2006), pp. 54–55.
166 “Luddite fallacy”
Ford, Lights in the Tunnel, pp. 95–100.
167 technologies as “extensions” of basic human capacities
Marshall McLuhan,
Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1994).
CHAPTER 2: THE GLOBAL MIND
1 to serve primarily as a distribution service for advertisements and junk mail
Steven Greenhouse, “Postal Service Is Nearing Default as Losses Mount,” New York Times, September 5, 2011.
2 phenomena-driven by the connection of two billion people (thus far) to the Internet
International Telecommunication Union, “The World in 2011: ICT Facts and Figures,” 2011, http://www.itu.int/ITU-D/ict/facts/2011/material/ICTFactsFigures2011.pdf.
3 with no human being involved—already exceeds the population of the Earth
Dave Evans, “The Internet of Things,” Cisco Blog, July 15, 2011, http://blogs.cisco.com/news/the-internet-of-things-infographic/.
4 connected to the Internet and exchanging information on a continuous basis
Jessi Hempel, “The Hot Tech Gig of 2022: Data Scientist,” Fortune, January 6, 2012; Evans, “The Internet of Things.”
5 the number of “connected things” is already much larger
Maisie Ramsay, “Cisco: 1 Trillion Connected Devices by 2013,” Wireless Week, March 25, 2010.
6 RFID tags in an effort to combat truancy
David Rosen, “Big Brother Invades Our Classrooms,” Salon, October 8, 2012, http://www.salon.com/2012/10/08/big_brother_invades_our_classrooms/.
7 “The round globe is a vast brain, instinct with intelligence”
Nathaniel Hawthorne, The House of the Seven Gables (Boston: Ticknor, Reed, & Fields, 1851), p. 283.
8 “where knowledge and ideas are received, sorted”
H. G. Wells, World Brain (London: Ayer, 1938).
9 World Wide Web on Google for some of the estimated one trillion web pages
Jesse Alpert and Nissan Hajaj, “We Knew the Web Was Big…,” Google Official Blog, July 25, 2008, http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/07/we-knew-web-was-big.html.
10 network of human thoughts that he termed the “Global Mind”
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, The Future of Man (1964), chap. 7, “The Planetisation of Man.”
11 “We shape our tools, and thereafter, our tools shape us”
McLuhan, Understanding Media.
