17. The Wheels of Industry

From Harari — Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

This chapter continues of the last few, with the author explaining how capitalism and industrialization has driven growth and expansion in the modern centuries.

In particular, this chapter talks about how human beings have harvested energy to further that growth. The author notes that before the industrial age, people only knew one way to convert energy, through themselves, i.e. metabolism. So humans relied on physical labor, or the labor of animals, which was also metabolism of them. So that world was limited in that sense. It is an interesting way to frame and model the situation. Even though human beings by this time have way surpassed the Darwinian confines of evolution through individualization and societies, they were still limited in how they could organize by very physiological means, and thus in a sense, they were still “limited”.

The author notes that a crucial breakthrough was the advent of steam engines. In the 1800s, this was a new and efficient means of storing and transferring energy. He says that the heart of the Industrial Revolution is really a revolution in energy conversion. The author does some back of the envelope math, showing that we still are actually using very little of the actual energy that comes to the Earth, ultimately from the sun. So the author here (and elsewhere in the book) acknowledges the challenges of sustainability and harnessing energy going forward in human civilization. But and large, he seems fairly optimistic that human beings will find new ways to convert energy.

It’s interesting that the author essentially links capitalism, a way of organizing human societies through continued growth and energy. It models the world in a very raw, basic form. And even though the author doesn’t seem to apply “fiction” much in these chapters, it fits nicely. Ultimately, per his definition, human being surviving and continuing to flourish is a very real concept. It is not “fiction”. But human beings have invented the fiction of capitalism to facilitate that organization and growth.

As human beings continue to expand and technology grows, and eventually we move beyond our singular planet, if science fiction authors and predictors are correct, our technology should accelerate at some point, and perhaps a Dyson sphere might be possible!