Over subsequent generations, and through constant modification of the natural environment, these settlements became ever more populated – capable of sustaining higher densities of people. Slowly, a world recognisable to us emerged: labour began to specialise, bringing along with it trade, the development of arts, centralised administration, codified systems of knowledge such as writing and mathematics, and various forms of property. It was during this period that the human animal asserted its mastery above all others, its existence increasingly defined by an ability to deploy complex technologies alongside sophisticated social institutions. All of this was built upon the shift to agriculture – the foundation of the First Disruption.
Industry: The Second Disruption
The second change was more recent, and certainly easier to locate. Beginning around 250 years ago, what has been termed the ‘First Machine Age ’ gave the world the Industrial Revolution. Just as the earlier development of agriculture transformed human society, industry allowed previously unimaginable feats of both creation and destruction.
This Second Disruption was powered as much by a transformation in energy as it was in production. Even as late as the 1600s – the century of Isaac Newton and Galileo – the primary sources of power remained much the same as in antiquity: water, wind, animals and humans. While there had been an energy revolution in medieval Europe, centred around the vertical windmill, this was unevenly distributed and far from exercising a regional, let alone global, impact.
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chaos under heaven