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Moving from Installation to Deployment
Our ability to create and use technology is what makes us innately human. The ability of that technology to change
our team to yours.
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Moving from Installation to Deployment
Our ability to create and use technology is what makes us innately human. The ability of that technology to change the world around it is what makes the modern world so amazing.
Our fascination with this change, and technology more broadly, is a relatively new thing. Just look at how our use of the word has grown over the last 100 years.
Although the term has only come on strong since the start of the 20th century, over the last 250 years we have lived through 5 major technology revolutions. Carolota Perez, in her excellent book, Technological Revolutions and Financial Capital: The Dynamics of Bubbles and Golden Ages, looked at these revolutions and the patterns that they created. I was really struck by what she had to say and will reference her work throughout this post in order to explain how technology shapes our life and how we can better predict the impact new technology will have on us.
Before I jump into explaining what those revolutions were, I want to define what makes a technology revolution. For Perez, there are two basic features:
1)The strong interconnectedness and interdependence of the participating systems in their technologies and markets.
2)The capacity to transform profoundly the rest of the economy (and eventually society).
In other words, the way technology moves through our life impacts our entire world. From the culture we live in to the way we work.
Laying the Foundation: The five technology revolutions
Excellent, now let’s jump into the five technological revolutions of the last 250 years.
1) Industrial Revolution: The industrial revolution is widely considered the first great technology revolution. It all started in England around 1771 with the invention of new ways to use water for power. Specifically, Richard Arkwright, a barber and wigmaker, figured out how to hook up a new spinning machine to a water wheel. Another inventor, Samuel Crompton, combined the spinning and weaving process into one machine in 1774. Raw cotton could be introduced in one end and produce cloth on the other. The invention was called a spinning “mule” (the feature image above) because, like a mule, it was the offspring of two different types of parents. The spinning mule created the factory, the most productive textile mills in the world and officially kicked off the industrial revolution.
2) Steam & Railways: In 1829 we had our second great technology revolution, again in England, with the advent of the steam engine and railway system. It was widely considered the ultimate triumph of the Industrial Revolution. The railroads allowed people, raw materials, and finished goods to rapidly move around England. People arrived in new industrial cities; trade within England, Europe, and the world gradually increased. The British Empire continued it’s dominance of the world because of their driver seat position through the first two technology revolutions.
3) Steel, Electricity, & Heavy Engineering: In 1875, we had the age of steel and electricity and for the first time it was Germany and the U.S. with enterprises like Carnegie Steel and General Electric leading the world through this revolution. With steel ships we could ship products around the world. Cheaper steel also meant we could build the transcontinental railway and have packaged and preserved food. Electricity networks illuminated the workplace and the wired networks brought us the worldwide telegraph.
4) Automobile, Oil, & Mass Production: In the e