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Jason Crawford hosted a 13 month Interintellect Salon series, writing his new book The Story of Industrial Civilization: Towards a New Philosophy of Progress chapter by chapter, Salon by Salon in the series…
Scope: 13 episodes (Note: There is no recording of Episode 10.)
Tickets: Series tickets are $120 (save over 50% off original price!) and get access to recordings of past events—all episodes except 10. Once you join, you can find the full series on Jason’s host page.
Purchasing a series ticket is available on this page if you’re signed in as an Interintellect member:
(If you’re already a member, make sure you’re signed in.)
Perks of being a member:
- Access to series tickets like this one
- Discount on all other Interintellect events
- Access to our community forum on Discord, where the follow up channel of The Story of Philosophy awaits attendees for discussions between episodes
- Access to all members-only events too
More details about memberships here.
Behind the world of our daily lives, there is a hidden world, one that keeps our world running. It is an industrial world, one of factories, engines, chemicals, and infrastructure, that most people rarely notice or appreciate. But every piece of it is a solution to a problem: a way to satisfy human needs in the face of nature’s constraints.
Progress writer Jason Crawford is writing a book about this world and how it was invented. In a series of salons, we will explore this content together, chapter by chapter, and get an inside look at the author’s creative process. Crawford will open each salon by talking about his research and writing on the topic so far, followed by discussion and Q&A:
1. Introduction (Apr 2021) What is “progress”, and why should we care? How the history of progress is relevant to today. How to even approach such an enormous topic and make it digestible. The book’s three big themes about how progress has transformed our lives.
2. Manufacturing (May 2021) How we make stuff, from stone tools to 3D printing. Improved materials; automated processes. The role of precision. Bonus: does automation reduce costs, or improve quality?
3. Agriculture (Jun 2021) How we made farm labor 2,000x more productive, so we can feed ourselves with 3% of the workforce instead of more than 50%. The role of soil fertility, crop varieties, mechanization, and refrigeration.
Summer break (July 2021)
4. Energy (Aug 2021) The fundamental general-purpose technology for all physical production. Why is the steam engine the classic symbol of the Industrial Revolution? The goals engine designers have been pursuing for 300 years. Why oil was necessary for the evolution of engines. Electricity as the universal energy.
5. Impacts on Work, Home, and Leisure (Sep 2021) How increasing incomes transformed our lives. More appliances, fewer servants, better hygiene. Rising wages, falling hours, vacations and retirement. Kids in school, women in the office.
6. Transportation (Oct 2021) How we get around: planes, trains, and automobiles. Why moving stuff is more important than moving people. Why sailors got lost at sea, and why gold rush prospectors had to risk life and limb on a six-month journey from New York to San Francisco. Why the Wright brothers succeeded when their top competitor had 50x the funding.
7. Information (Nov 2021) From cuneiform to computing. The three primary goals of IT, and how the three eras of IT have successively addressed them. Why digital technology is a katamari ball that sucks up everything in its path.
8. Impacts on Commerce, Politics, and Culture (Dec 2021) How great retailers like Sears and Amazon were built on top of revolutions in transportation and information technology. How the railroads helped defeat the Corn Laws. How radio and television created mass culture.
9. Medicine (Jan 2022) Global life expectancy has doubled. How did we do it? The role of sanitation, vaccinations, and antibiotics—and why we still got COVID-19. Vitamin deficiencies and why we don’t get scurvy or rickets. Why there were no elective surgeries before the 20th century.
10. Safety (Feb 2022) How have we made ourselves safer from fire, flood, and natural disasters? What about the hazards of technology itself? How to think about the tradeoff between safety and progress.
11. Is Progress Good? (Mar 2022) Does material progress translate to human well-being? Are we stuck on a hedonic treadmill? And even if progress does have benefits, is it worth the costs and risks?
12. Can Progress Continue? (Apr 2022) We’ve had a good run. Did we just get lucky? Have we eaten all the low-hanging fruit? Are we constrained by resources? Or are there more breakthroughs left to be discovered?
13. What Should We Do? (May 2022) If progress is possible and desirable, but not inevitable, then how can we maintain it, protect it, even accelerate it? My message to scientists, engineers, and entrepreneurs.
The goal of Crawford’s work is not just to tell stories, but to lay the foundation for a new philosophy of progress, which will be the focus of the last three salons. These three salons will exclusively be open to participants who sign up for the whole series.
This series will give you a new lens on the world: the progress lens. Join us as we learn to use the history of progress to understand the present and to choose our future.
Image source: invisible creature for NASA