The following is a first draft of an article I've written this morning for
"Prospect" magazine, so I'd appreciate its confinement to FW discussion
group for the time being. However, it needs further work on it and I'd thus
appreciate any constructive criticism -- if anybody is so inclined --
before I send it.
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FAR DISTANT MUSINGS?
Keith Hudson
I've been musing recently about Joseph Schumpeter's ideas. He presented a
model of economic growth in which he supposed that it proceeded in bursts
of technological development. Each new wave produced a surge of investment
and a swathe of jobs in new industries, but also accompanied by what he
called "gales of creative destruction" as old jobs were destroyed.
Modern Schumpeterians justify this picture by pointing to the first long
wave of 1780-1840 in which coal-based steam power founded the factory
system, followed by the development of the railways from the 1840s to the
1890s, followed by the development of electrical power from the 1890s to
the 1930s which enabled a whole new swathe of new industries to emerge
(most with smaller factories), followed by the use of oil and the motor car
in the 1930s to the 1980s, followed finally by Information Technology.
I'm not so sure that IT qualifies as a major wave in comparison with steam
power or the development of electricity. IT seemed as though it was going
to transform every aspect of the modern economy and society only a few
years ago, but it seems to have subsided considerably. I think that IT it
can be more truly regarded as a late development of the previous surge in
electrification (with its attendant partners: telephone, radio and TV).
While I wouldn't want to disparage the usefulness of looking at economic
development in terms of the "Schumpeter waves" as outlined above, the
common feature seems to be based upon the more efficient use of energy. If
we look at this alone then I would suggest that the really significant
waves of development have only happened twice so far.
The first was the Agricultural Revolution of about 5,000BC by which
hunter-gathering gave way to pastoralism and farming. This produced a
fantastic upsurge in the use of energy -- namely sunlight. Instead of
cropping the varied natural products of the environment. the
agriculturalist tapped directly into the intensive cultivation of a
relatively few natural species -- and, indeed, bred those species into
biological niches far removed from their natural origins.
What was the efficiency gain of the Agricultural Revolution? Whereas the
hunter-gatherer needed something like 25 acres of land per person to
survive, the farmer need only a fraction of an acre per person -- less than
0.2 acre in most habitats. This was an energy gain of at least of at
12,500%! This "powered" a vast enlargement of the human population and the
establishment of vast agrarian empires in many parts of the world,
particularly in Eurasia.
I don't have the basic sorts of figures I would need to calculate the
efficiency gain of the Industrial Revolution. I doubt if anybody has. But
let me make a stab. Based on the increase in standard of living of the
ordinary worker during the latter part of the 19th century, I think we can
conservatively regard the gain in efficiency due to the use of coal as
something of the order of 10 times. The advent of oil, and then natural
gas, in the 20th century must have produced at least another 10-fold
increase in efficiency. Thus the gain in efficiency brought about during
the Industrial Revolution and up to modern times has been about 10,000%.
This is of the same order of magnitude as that of the Agricultural Revolution.
Could another Revolution of the same order take place? I think it could,
but before I attempt to justify this, let me divert briefly to another
important aspect of Schumpeter's ideas. This is that major waves of
economic development occurred when not just one technology, but several,
occurred at the same time. I won't go into detail about these constitutent
technologies in the case of the first two Revolutions, but let me look at
what might be the crucial technologies of the next one.
The first is the key one of solar energy technology (and wind and wave
power in some restricted areas). Although the efficiency of solar cells of
various sorts is still low (but improving steadily), the actual amount of
solar radiation the earth receives during daylight hours is several
thousand times the energy we receive presently from coal, oil and gas. So
we seem to have a new potential source of energy that is of the same order
of increase as occurred in the first two Revolutions.
Now the chief feature of solar energy is that it is received fairly
uniformly over the whole earth. It doesn't reside in isolated pockets. In
fact, it could be developed geographically in a rather similar way to that
of the natural environment itself. It could even be somewhat more
widespread because there are large desert areas of the world in which the
natural environment is very much restricted due to lack of some key chemicals.
Solar technology thus has the potential to be a much more democratic type
of energy technology than the present one which depends on the Middle East,
Siberia and a few other regions. Almost any population in any region could
tap into sufficient energy for a considerable amount of economic
development -- and we could foresee quite new populations arising in the
vast desert regions on all the continents.
I suggest that the other allied technologies of this Schumpeterian
Revolution would be nanotechnology and biotechnology. Research and
development of nanotechnology is growing apace. I can think of three main
groups of product. Firstly, there are many products which can only work at
a scale far below present ones. These include many medical devices and
drug-delivery systems which can be introduced into the bloodstream or body
organs. Secondly, many existing machines can be made in miniature versions
for special purposes. Amazing examples of these are already being made
(such as helicopters, aeroplanes and boring machines the size of a thumb
nail, and gear wheels which are smaller than the cross-section of a human
hair) and there'll undoubtedly be hundreds, if not thousands, more such.
Thirdly, even normal-sized products could be made using nanotechnology
methods, though large items would perforce be produced slowly. However,
there is no reason in principle why, for example, a small town in the
middle of what is now the Sahara Desert, couldn't produce, for example, a
tractor or a car by the slow extrusion of large parts using carbon-based
materials (C, O, N, Si and some other elements being all around) as
replacements for metals and scarce elements. This last group of
nano-produced, but normal-sized, goods is undoubtedly a lot further into
the future than the first two groups, but it is a glimpse of what might be
possible one day if other economic circumstances point that way.
The production of carbon-based materials (out of, mainly, electricity
produced by sunlight and the carbon from CO2 in the air) leads me to
consider what will probably be the necessary input of bio-engineering.
Serious research is already going on into ideas of trees producing plastic
"fruits". Taking this only a little further one can imagine that groups of
genes could be devised which, instead of replicating themselves, would
produce specific items at nano- or normal-scales.
How long would it be before solar energy systems, nanotechnology and
genetically controlled production methods come together, and therefore be
accessible in principle and in practice to any group living almost anywhere
on the earth's surface? Well, forecasts of this sort are notoriously wrong,
but it's to be borne in mind that research and development into all three
of these methods is already going on at a considerable pace. The
conjunction of these three into a new productive system could be much
sooner than we might imagine -- say in 20 years?
Our present economy, based as it is on highly concentrated sources of
energy, also produces highly concentrated regions of populations
(particularly mega-metropolises), highly concentrated large corporations,
highly concentrated sources of pollution, and highly concentrated needs for
other necessary (and desirable) products which are not close at hand at
present (such as fresh water, membership of human-scale communities,
accessibility to lovely countryside for recreation).
The next Revolution and its new technologies, powered by yet another vast
new energy source, is surely on the cards at some stage. Like the first
two, it would surely re-make the whole of our natural, social and
governmental environment. More speculatively, I like to think that, given
what we have learned about the more undesirable historical consequences of
the societies produced by both the Agricultural and Industrial Revolutions,
we might make a better stab of the next one.
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Keith Hudson, Bath, England; e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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