Hacker Cinema
The Prize
1963 · Film · 134 min
Directed by Mark Robson
A group of Nobel laureates descends on Stockholm to accept their awards. Among them is American novelist Andrew Craig, a former literary luminary now writing pulp detective stories to earn a living. Craig, who is infamous for his drinking and womanizing, formulates a wild theory that physics prize winner Dr. Max Stratman has been replaced by an impostor, embroiling Craig and his chaperone in a Cold War kidnapping plot.
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From a recent HN comment, a list, some authors, and some guidelines, largely based on books which radically changed my thinking.
Currently: Vaclav Smil, Energy in World History (1994), and Manfred Weissenbacher, Sources of Power (2009). Both detail the role and impact of energy through world history. The latter draws strongly on the first, both are exceedingly well documented. TL;DR: coal changed much, oil changed everything.
http://www.worldcat.org/title/energy-in-world-history/oclc/30398523&referer=brief_results
http://www.worldcat.org/title/before-oil-the-ages-of-foraging-agriculture-and-coal/oclc/837625798&referer=brief_results
http://www.worldcat.org/title/oil-age-and-beyond/oclc/837625970&referer=brief_results
James Burke's books Connections and The Day the Universe Changed, and their accompanying television series, were a profound introduction to the history of technology, science, ideas, and philosophy. Though 30+ years old, they remain highly current and relevant.
https://www.worldcat.org/title/connections/oclc/4494136
https://www.worldcat.org/title/day-the-universe-changed/oclc/12049817
Jeremy Campbell's Grammatical Man (1984) introduced the concepts of information theory and their deep, deep, deep interconnections to a tremendous number of interconnected systems, many not explored within his book. Darwin's The Origin of Species, James Gleick's Chaos, and many of the works of Santa Fe Institute members, including John C. Holland, J. Doyne Farmer, Geoffrey West, W. Brian Arthur, David Krakauer, and Sander van der Leeuw, continue these themes.
https://www.worldcat.org/title/grammatical-man-information-entropy-language-and-life/oclc/8306673
https://www.worldcat.org/title/chaos-making-a-new-science/oclc/15366709
William Ophuls' Ecology and the Politics of Scarcity (1977) is perhaps the best, most comprehensive, shortest, and most readable exposition of the fact, reality, dynamics, and interactions of limits on the present phase of fossil-fuel fed economic growth I've found. This is a book I recommend not only for the message, but the author's clarity of thought and exposition, his meticulous research, exquisite bibliographical notes, and, given the nearly 30 years elapsed, testability numerous of his predictions, some failed, yes, others uncannily accurate. Rather more the latter. In a similar vein, William R. Catton's Overshoot looks at the ecological dynamics in more depth, with much wisdom, the writings of Richard Heinberg cover the ground of limits fairly accessibly and more recently. Vaclav Smil in numerous books addresses technical factors of the profound nature of the past 250 years, and implications for the future. Meadows, et al, in Limits to Growth set off much of the post-1970 discussion (though they're hardly the first to raise the question -- it dates to Seneca the Elder),
https://www.worldcat.org/title/ecology-and-the-politics-of-scarcity-prologue-to-a-political-theory-of-the-steady-state/oclc/2524932
https://www.worldcat.org/title/overshoot-the-ecological-basis-of-revolutionary-change/oclc/6195764
https://www.worldcat.org/search?q=au%3Aheinberg%2C+richard&qt=owc_search
https://www.worldcat.org/search?q=au%3Asmil%2C+vaclav&qt=results_page
Though hardly pessimistic, Daniel Yergin's book The Prize (and TV series) impressed upon me more than any other just how much petroleum specifically changed and transformed the modern world. Though intended largely as laudetory and championing the oil industry by the author, my read of it was exceptionally cautionary. The impacts on business, everyday life, politics, wars, industry, and transport, and the rate at which they occurred, are simply staggering. You can continue this exploration in Vaclav Smil's Energy in World History (1994) (I've recommended Smil independently elsewhere), and a rare but profound two-volume set I'm currently reading, Manfred Weissenbacher's Sources of Power: How energy forges human history (2009). The shear physicality of this book speaks to the message -- it's divided into five parts: 1) Foraging Age (6 pages), 2) Agricultural Age (156 pp), 3) Coal Age (160 pp), 4) Oil Age (296 pp), and 5) Beyond the Oil Age (142 pp). That is, the ~2 million years of pre-agricultural existence are little more than a footnote, the 8,000 years of agriculture roughly equal to the 150 years of coal, and the 100 years of petroleum use roughly twice either. The oil and post-oil ages comprise their own volume. Yergin followed up with The Quest, continuing the search for oil, though I've been less impressed by it.
https://www.worldcat.org/title/prize-the-epic-quest-for-oil-money-and-power/oclc/22381448
https://www.worldcat.org/title/energy-in-world-history/oclc/30398523
https://www.worldcat.org/title/before-oil-the-ages-of-foraging-agriculture-and-coal/oclc/837625798
https://www.worldcat.org/title/oil-age-and-beyond/oclc/837625970
Adam Smith's An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations is among the most-cited (and most incorrectly cited), least-read books of high influence I'm aware of, outside religious texts (and perhaps it is a religious text to some…). The author's message has been exceptionally shaped and manipulated by a powerful set of forces, quite often utterly misrepresenting Smith's original intent. Reading him in his own words, yourself, is strongly recommended. I'd also recommend scholarship particularly by Emma Rothschild and Gavin Kennedy, though also others, on Smith. Contrast with the portrayal by the propaganda disinformation front of the Mont Pelerin Society / Atlas Network / so-called Foundation for Economic Education, and much of the modern American Libertarian movement (von Mises, Hayek, Friedman, Hazlett, Rothbard, and more recently, Norberg). Contrast The Invisible Hand (1964), a compilation of essays published by Libertarian house Regnery Press in 1966, at the beginning of the rise in public use of Smith's metaphor to indictate mechanism rather than an expression of the unknown.
There are numerous editions of Smith, I believe the Glasgow is frequently cited by Smith scholars: https://www.worldcat.org/title/glasgow-edition-of-the-works-and-correspondence-of-adam-smith-2-an-inquiry-into-the-nature-and-causes-of-the-wealth-of-nations-vol-1/oclc/832488566
https://www.worldcat.org/title/economic-sentiments-adam-smith-condorcet-and-the-enlightenment/oclc/45282974
https://www.worldcat.org/title/adam-smith-and-the-invisible-hand/oclc/820387997
https://www.worldcat.org/title/adam-smiths-lost-legacy/oclc/56598640
https://www.worldcat.org/title/invisible-hand-a-collection-of-essays-on-the-economic-philosophy-of-free-enterprise/oclc/326622
I'd like to put in recommendations on technology specifically, but am still searching for a good general text. The material's covered somewhat in the chaos and complexity recommendations above (Campbell et al), though I'd add Joseph Tainter's The Collapse of Complex Societies. Charle's Perrow has several excellent books including Normal Accidents and Organizing America. I'd like to reference something concerning Unix, Linux, and programming, perhaps Kernighan and Pike's The Unix Programming Environment, Linus Torvalds' Just for Fun, Richard Stallman's The GNU Manifesto, and Steve McConnel's Code Complete. The O'Reilly book Unix Power Tools also encapsulates much the strength of the Unix toolset. All these are somewhat dated.
https://www.worldcat.org/title/collapse-of-complex-societies/oclc/15083222
https://www.worldcat.org/title/normal-accidents-living-with-high-risk-technologies/oclc/10229932
https://www.worldcat.org/title/organizing-america-wealth-power-and-the-origins-of-corporate-capitalism/oclc/939707157
https://www.worldcat.org/title/unix-programming-environment/oclc/10269821
https://www.worldcat.org/title/unix-power-tools/oclc/52381684
'The Prize' is phenomenal. I took an econ class on the petroleum industry and the prof used it instead of a text book. PBS turn into into a really good multi-part documentary.
People learn through stories and pictures. The documentary is a powerful teaching tool. Not perfect, and it can mislead, but powerful.
I've spent more hours than I care to admit over the past year going through a range of material from slick and well-prepared documentaries (including several on this list: "Inside Job", "The Four Horsemen", "Capitalism in Crisis", How Many People Can Live on Planet Earth", "The Fog of War", "The Ascent of Money" (well, I read the book). "Collapse" with Michael Ruppert.
And a few which aren't on the list: "The Prize", on the story of petroleum, based on Daniel Yergin's book of the same name. James Burke's "Connections" and "The Day the Universe Changed". And numerous conference presentations, interviews, and various other presentations.
What's particularly useful is watching these not online through a crappy video player, but by downloading the videos, where I can stop and start playback, and by checking up on points (did that really happen? is there documentation of that fact?), and taking notes. Sometimes I'll breeze through a light topic at 140% realtime, in others it may take me most of a week to get through a 90 minute lecture.
Yes, books have their place, but a well-made documentary or series which mixes spoken word, visual imagery, demonstration, and other effects, hits on the keys your mind uses to form memories. I'd watched "Connections" decades ago as a child, but bits stuck with me, and it was interesting to watch myself anticipating Burke reciting "Hardwick Hall, more glass than wall", which I'd last heard some 30 years earlier.
Yes, there's material that tends toward the bogus, but sometimes watching good bogosity is decent training, or you can simply skip over that part of the list. I tackled an instance of this a few weeks back with an RT interview that was posted to HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6905655 Dissecting the elements of conspiracy (or finding out that the conspiracists were right -- reading up on COINTELPRO and Operation HOODWINK (an attempt to set the Communist Party of the US and La Cosa Nostra against one another) from the FBI's own website a couple of days ago was sobering in context of Snowden and related allegations: http://vault.fbi.gov/cointel-pro/hoodwink).
Ruppert's a case of one of the shakier videos. His history's pretty solid, his near-term future somewhat bleaker than I suspect is strictly accurate. If you read on background, the director notes that the story is as much about a man unmade by his own pursuit of an idea: "What I hoped to reveal was ... that his obsession with the collapse of industrial civilization has led to the collapse of his life. In the end, it is a character study about his obsession." (Ruppert's since continued to have a pretty hard time).
Still, anyone not planning to be dead within fifteen years had better consider what happens on the energy, resources, population, and sustainability fronts to be the biggest factors in their lifetime.
Dismissing the documentary format out-of-hand as some have done here, is simply uncalled for. Actually, it's pretty much straight out of the old FBI playbook. Perhaps even the current one.
Because transportation accounts for about 1/3 of all energy use, and oil accounts for 95%+ of all transportation energy.
Because good transportation fuels are hard to find. If you're on a fixed track (rail, trolly), you can electrify. If you're not going too far and can keep your vehicle weight low, batteries become an option. If you've got a big enough structure, you can consider solid fuels (ships). For overland untracked transport (trucks), you might be able to use steam power (allowing solid fuels) at considerable losses of convenience and increase in mechanical complexity.
For heavier-than air craft you're pretty much SOL.
Transportation isn't just moving people around, but everything: food, raw materials, finished goods, and more.
And liquid fuels are also convenient for powering other equipment, especially for mobile, temporary, or remote locations.
Finding a replacement for liquid fossil-fuel based hydrocarbons is the holy grail.
Coal and oil fundamentally changed human existence in ways that are very, very difficult to convey. They've made possible not only all of modern technology, but even the world of 1850, primitive as we would consider it, would be impossible without fossil fuels. Take them away and you're going back before that time, but with 14x the population. Trust me, that's the sort of thing that keeps me up nights.
Though he's rather much the cornucopian, Daniel Yergin's The Prize, both a book and TV series, really impress how much the world changed with the discovery of petroleum in 1859. I highly recommend it:
http://fixyt.com/watch?v=Qspu35JG59Q
http://www.powells.com/biblio/1-9781439110126-2
Rockefeller's personal fortune alone amounted to ~1.5% of the US' GDP
I'd have to dig for the references, but as I recall it was Rockefeller or Carnegie whose income (or at least that of their companies) comprised a percent or two of GDP.
In terms of wealth, Rockefeller is considered to be the wealthiest individual in modern times. From Wikipedia:
By the time of his death in 1937, estimates place his net worth in the range of US$392 billion to US$663.4 billion in adjusted dollars for the late 2000s (decade), and it is estimated that his personal fortune was equal to 1.53% of the total U.S. annual GDP in his day. When considering the real value of his wealth, Rockefeller is widely held to be the wealthiest person in history.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wealthiest_historical_figures
A related reference I strongly recommend (and Ida Tarbell makes an appearance there as well) is Daniel Yergin's The Prize (both a book and PBS/BBC TV series now available on YouTube). The arc inscribed by the development of petroleum is truly staggering.
As to what changed: 100:1 EROIE energy, high-yield mineral deposits, a lack of complexity brakes (pollution, NIMBY, anti-trust, and similar rules), as well as the vast potentials available through exploiting nascent energy and mineral wealth, as well as the huge technological advances of ~1880 - 1930 had a huge amount to do with the wealth accumulated at that time. I see this as more having to do with multiple low entropy resources than regulation, thought that has had some effects. And the negative externalities were tremendous as well, from economic instabilities (the late 1800s saw tremendous busts, despite a gold-backed currency) to corruption and abuse, to pollution and discrimination.