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Page added on September 19, 2018
Our Innovation Civilization
ALL PEOPLE LIVE in a society, but fewer live in a civilization. The difference between a society and a civilization is the degree of innovation found in each. Since 1950, the West has been a civilization and not just a society. Today, I would roughly equate the West with the 35 countries that are members of the Organisation for Economic Co‑operation and Development, of which Canada has been a member since the OECD was founded in 1961.
I would also argue that the civilization represented by the OECD countries is the most successful known to humankind. Put simply, there has never been a better time to be alive, largely because of the innovations that have been brought forth in the past 70 years. These have been innovations in science and technology, for sure, but there have also been important advances in social, political and cultural institutions and practices. All told, when historians a thousand years from now look back on the hundred years from 1950 to 2050, they will call it the finest Golden Age ever experienced by humankind.
Innovation Civilizations Over the Centuries
There have been other highly innovative eras over the past 5,000 years, so when I make the claim that ours is the finest I fully understand what a tall order that is. Given how revolutionary some of the great innovations of the past were, reasonable people may disagree with my claim.
For example, consider the very first communities, for which grains and livestock were domesticated and urban settlements first appeared. To move from hunter-gatherer societies to urban communities was a massive shift, facilitated by growing cereals and mastering agriculture. This activity began to produce a sufficient surplus of nutrients to sustain civilization-enhancing activities such as administration, irrigation, medicine, finance, trade, architecture, the arts and other cultural activities.
This is essentially the story of Uruk, an ancient city of Sumer, in Mesopotamia, 5,000 years ago. Uruk’s other major innovation was writing. You cannot have civilization without the ability to record facts, figures and thoughts, and writing permits the collection of data, accelerates the diffusion of knowledge, and cements the propagation of wisdom.
Other civilizations have added to the cumulative stock of innovation that we still use and profit from today. The ancient Phoenicians gave us the alphabet that we still use predominantly in the West. More than 1,000 years ago, the Song dynasty of China was the first to use banknotes and a compass (with true north). The mighty Roman Empire laid the foundations for civil engineering, with Roman aquaducts still standing today. Our principles of mathematics have been greatly enriched by concepts first articulated by the Muslim and Aztec mathematicians hundreds of years ago. And even the “dark” Middle Ages contributed vast innovation in the architecture and design of Gothic cathedrals.
Shortcomings of Earlier Innovation Civilizations
While these and other civilizations contributed materially to humankind, they all also left much to be desired. By today’s Western standards they each contained fundamental flaws.
One central defect, from our modern perspective, is that the innovations of the day largely benefited a small portion of a highly stratified society. Up until the mid- to-19th century, some 80% of the population of most nations were either slaves, serfs, indentured servants, or other underclasses. And even in ancient democratic Athens, the franchise was the exclusive preserve of a very small group of landowning men. Even in Western countries, women were not permitted to vote until well into the 20th century.
Moreover, life was precarious for the underclasses in earlier civilizations. Often the agricultural surplus was insufficient to provide a minimum number of required calories each day. Famine was a constant possibility, and hunger and malnutrition was a perpetual state of being for many. The Irish potato famine, which reduced Ireland’s population by 25% by causing the deaths of one million people and driving another million to other countries, occurred less than 200 years ago. And if malnutrition didn’t kill, disease regularly did. In 1348, at the height of the Italian Renaissance (perhaps one of the most flourishing moments of the arts ever), the plague hit Italy (and the rest of Western Europe), and killed between 20% and 60% of local populations, depending on local conditions. As recently as 100 years ago more people died in the Spanish flu pandemic between 1918 and 1920 than were killed in the First World War.
Then there was death by accident. In the days before occupational health laws and fire codes, hundreds of thousands died in industrial and general accidents each year. In the crowded cities, wood was the most common building material, and each major city had at least one “great fire” in its history. These fires were “great” indeed, often destroying 50 to 80% of all buildings, and in an age before property insurance losing a home often meant the homeowner had no way to pay for a re-build.
These earlier civilizations were also rife with war. As soon as one community produced a surplus of food and wealth, a neighbouring community would decide to exploit this by seizing its neighbour’s newfound wealth. Thousands of technical innovations over the centuries were developed to assist the warriors in this theft, and the concept of an “arms race” is not restricted to modern times. The ancient spear was bested by the long bow, and that by the cross bow, and that by the musket, then by the rifle, and by the machine gun, and by the missile.
Today’s Innovation Civilization
So, what makes today`s civilization so much better than the past ones? First, technological and scientific breakthroughs have continued apace, and indeed have accelerated beyond what anyone would have imagined even 100 years ago. Agriculture is a case in point; as recently as the 1970s, eminent thinkers predicted that as the world’s population reached 4 billion to 6 billion people, mass starvation would follow because the capacity of farmers would simply not be able to meet the demand for food. But a number of agricultural breakthroughs have allowed farmers to produce much more food per hectare, and productivity throughout the food production supply chain — including all-important logistics and delivery — have increased food consumption per person dramatically both in the OECD countries and across the globe (the world’s population has since grown to more than 7 billion people).
As for disease eradication, again it is a fantastic story, enabled by countless breakthroughs in infectious disease pharmaceuticals and vaccines, and acute care procedures; most people who had a heart attack before the Second World War died from it, while today (if an ambulance gets to them in time) they will generally live. And chronic care therapies produce a much higher quality of life for stroke victims today than a century ago.
Regrettably, most countries still spend inordinate sums of money on weapons-related innovations and procurement, but the good news is that we have also developed institutional innovations that make the use of these weapons less likely. The two largest nuclear-weapons powers, the United States and Russia, have a “hotline” and talk to each other regularly, all with a view to avoiding the kind of “accidental” war that precipitated the start of the First World War and its attendant loss of life.
More intriguing is the impressive experiment in cross-national community building exemplified by the European Union. The history of Europe prior to 1945 is one of almost constant war and cross-border conflict. Every conceivable reason why people fight vicious armed conflicts with others has reared its ugly head over several thousand years of “civilization” in Europe. There were religious wars, wars caused by dynastic succession crises, wars of empire (where colonial interests clashed), and wars caused by “accident,” to name just a few rationales.
After the Second World War, several statesmen concluded there must be a better way forward, and in 1957 the highly innovative European Union was born with six member states; it now numbers 28 (although the United Kingdom is slated to withdraw soon). Moreover, all the EU countries are also members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), formed in 1949, which defends its member states in holding that an attack on one member is an attack on all. It is therefore highly unlikely that a war between any two or more member states would occur today.
Given that between the time of the Roman Empire and 1945 there were literally hundreds of wars in Europe, the creation and growth of the EU and NATO over the past seven decades has been a magnificent innovation in social engineering and international politics.
Some critics of our innovation civilization argue that the information technology revolution of the last 20 years (now characterized by artificial intelligence and “big data”) has within it the seeds of our demise, particularly because continuing automation will cause massive unemployment and social dislocation. It is to this issue I will turn in the second part of the Innovation Civilization series.
18 Comments on "Our Innovation Civilization"
fmr-paultard on Wed, 19th Sep 2018 8:15 am
dis supterad seems to read my posts or something. yes, the contrary to this is living in 3rd word like aswang. no fun. and a failed phils state sharing powa with muslims / the religion of peace. somehow the path to sharing powa is never peaceful for a supposedly peaceful religion
bob on Wed, 19th Sep 2018 2:46 pm
All these advances are great. Too bad we don’t think about or address blowback. Take for example our fantastic medical advances. They will all be gone in a few decades after bacteria figure out how to get around our antibiotics. And then an infected, broken leg will lead to death. Hospitals will be shunned as places of death. Any infection will result in, yes, death. Operations that seem so great today will not be done in the future. Our great world of medicine will be over forever.
You can apply this same logic to most of our civilized inventions. And yes, they will stumble, fall and be discarded in the future, just like medicine will be.
fmr-paultard on Wed, 19th Sep 2018 3:24 pm
oh nos supertard cody wilson (pbuh) has fallen, alledgedly
makati1 on Wed, 19th Sep 2018 7:37 pm
Innovation. LMAO! We are innovating ourselves to extinction. Few ‘innovations’ are/were actually beneficial to humans. They mostly were profitable to our masters as bob said.
BTW fmr, the people here in the Ps enjoy life much more than you ever could surround by debt, insanity and your police state government watching you pee.
Filipinos know how to enjoy life. Yes, there are some really poor here, but they at least get free basic medical care from the government, and it never get cold, 70s to low 90s year round. You cannot say that about the Us and you have some really poor there also. I have seen them begging on the streets of Philadelphia so I know they are everywhere in America.
Millions of AMERICAN kids that go to bed hungry every night. Want the stats? Easy to find on the internet. “…42.2 million Americans struggle with hunger. 13.1 million are children; 5.7 million are seniors. This means that more than 1 in 8 human beings in America are food deprived.”
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/millions-of-american-children-go-to-bed-hungry-their_us_58d4203ae4b002482d6e6f94
Slip slidin’…
makati1 on Wed, 19th Sep 2018 8:37 pm
Pigs and 3rd world America: “”Serious Public Health Crisis” Developing As Lagoons Of Pig Waste Overflow After Florence”
“As the flooding from Hurricane Florence dissipates, North Carolina residents could face significant public-health and environmental crisis after at least 17 animal waste pits, coal ash facilities, and human sewage plants across the state released millions of gallons of toxic liquid into nearby communities….
…there had been two confirmed waste lagoon breaches, including a Duplin County site that contains more than 300,000 cubic feet of waste. According to other state officials, two more waste lagoons had structural damage. Thirteen had discharges, nine were completely flooded and 55 others were near overflowing — an environmental disaster that could have severe consequences for surrounding communities.”
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-09-19/lagoons-pig-waste-overflow-after-florence-serious-public-health-crisis-develops
“…pig waste contains E. coli and bacteria. Sewage overflows, combined with floodwaters is the makings of an ecological disaster. Humans coming in contact with the contaminated water could face life-threatening infections.”
Slip slidin’…on pig shit. LOL
MASTERMIND on Wed, 19th Sep 2018 8:58 pm
Proud Boy flicks lit cigarette at someone’s face, gets knocked out for it.
https://www.facebook.com/BoyboiiAT/posts/10214788728566212
Cloggie on Thu, 20th Sep 2018 2:54 am
Energy headlines today:
https://cleantechnica.com/2018/09/17/saudi-arabia-lends-lucid-motors-1-billion-for-electric-cars/
Saudi Arabia Invests $1 Billion Into Lucid Motors For Electric Car Production
https://cleantechnica.com/2018/09/19/solar-wind-10-of-us-electricity-generation-in-1st-half-of-2018/
Solar + Wind = 10% of US Electricity Generation in 1st Half of 2018
https://cleantechnica.com/2018/09/19/uk-wind-hits-breaks-through-20-gigawatt-mark/
UK Wind Breaks Through 20 Gigawatt Mark
https://cleantechnica.com/2018/09/19/nearly-400-investors-with-32-trillion-in-assets-step-up-climate-action-to-support-paris-agreement/
Nearly 400 Investors With $32 Trillion In Assets Step Up Climate Action To Support Paris Agreement
https://cleantechnica.com/2018/09/19/electric-for-all-campaign-from-volkswagen-10-million-evs-based-on-meb-platform/
Electric For All Campaign From Volkswagen — 10 Million EVs Based On MEB Platform
https://cleantechnica.com/2018/09/19/simec-atlantis-unveils-worlds-largest-tidal-turbine/
SIMEC Atlantis Unveils World’s Largest Tidal Turbine
2 MW underwater turbine, 25 years life expectancy. Note that water has a density of 1000 times higher than air, so these turbines can be MUCH smaller than wind turbines to generate the same amount of energy.
onlooker on Thu, 20th Sep 2018 3:20 am
All told, when historians a thousand years from now look back on the hundred years from 1950 to 2050, they will call it the finest Golden Age ever experienced by humankind.—
As said above, the great irony is that technology, economic growth and innovation have set the stage for our collective demise as all this has allowed us humans to multiply tremendously and degrade and deplete the life sustaining properties of this planet. It is like saying that when a bank robber has just robbed a bank and is flush with lots of money, said person is living the good life. Yes at that moment but soon this act will be his downfall.
makati1 on Thu, 20th Sep 2018 3:59 am
You are very optimistic, onlooker. I wish there would be some ‘historians’ 1,000 years from now, or even 100 years. I don’t see that future for humans or any large life forms on this planet. I doubt that the rats and roaches will care what happened in our time.
If the so called “solar minimum’ does actually stop, or even slow, the average global temps from increasing for a few years, it will not make a difference in the long run. It will just be used to ‘prove’ that global warming is a ‘hoax’ and the burning of FFs will increase.
Insanity from the top is working its way to the bottom in the Us and spreading to the other Western countries. I’m glad I am 74. At best, I have another 20 or so years to observe our suicide as a species. I may even witness its end, if the insane push the nuclear button. We shall see.
Cloggie on Thu, 20th Sep 2018 4:13 am
298 kmh on a bicycle in Utah:
http://www.spiegel.de/panorama/leute/neuer-weltrekord-denise-mueller-korenek-radelt-mit-296-km-h-durch-die-wueste-a-1229039.html
onlooker on Thu, 20th Sep 2018 6:45 am
Notice Mak, I didn’t say we would survive, rather it is setting up for the perfect storm of our demise. Our numbers, our ways of living, our hubris. Add to that a Mass Extinction Event and our time on this planet will come and go with an uncaring cosmos as the only witness and maybe ET sometime in the future will get a hint of our time here
makati1 on Thu, 20th Sep 2018 7:54 am
onlooker, yes, maybe some alien historian will take interest in the remains of our civilization. I reread your comment. I was the one to add that we probably will not be the historians you speak of.
We cannot stop the run for the cliff, but a few of us can move to the outer edge of the herd and observe the other lemmings rush to the edge ahead of us.
MASTERMIND on Thu, 20th Sep 2018 8:54 am
Marine Le Pen, the leader of the French far right has been left shocked and furious after a court ordered her to be examined by a psychiatrist to determine if she “is capable of understanding remarks and answering questions”.
Conservatism is a mental illness!
Antius on Thu, 20th Sep 2018 10:02 am
“Marine Le Pen, the leader of the French far right has been left shocked and furious after a court ordered her to be examined by a psychiatrist to determine if she “is capable of understanding remarks and answering questions”.
Conservatism is a mental illness!”
Marxists are arrogant and condescending tossers. You don’t agree with us, therefore you must be insane! They pulled the same trick in the Soviet Union. That turned out so well didn’t it? A place so intellectually suppressed that it couldn’t keep up with the free world technological innovation even when it resorted to spying and stealing.
Millimind has this quaint idea that members of the political left (people erroneously called liberals) are intellectually superior, a belief that they all seem to share it would seem, as if this in itself is some kind of justification for their ideas. I have never met a single one that didn’t have serious emotional problems. Their politics is basically a mechanism that allows them to deal with inner turmoil. Marxism provides them with a way of dreaming that the whole world can be made perfect; reduced to a kind of elegantly simple model. They have killed millions trying to force the world into that ideological straightjacket.
When critically examined, their ideas are always so full of contradictions that they are fearful of allowing open discussion and vitriolic of anyone that dares. Expect to be labelled an extremist; a ‘preacher of hate’; a racist; or any other slang word that they can dream up. If you threaten their ideas, you threaten their emotional security, and hence in a very real sense, anything that appears to be opposed to their general worldview is offensive to them. It is therefore a worldview that leads naturally to moral absolutism and totalitarianism.
All forms of intellectual Marxism are a way of denying reality. Often, the more idealistic and unachievable the vision is, the more popular it becomes. Hence the idea that we can abolish all human distinctions; race, sex, culture, etc. even though we have to celebrate the existence of these things at the same time, so long as we don’t celebrate anything that is seen to be white European along the way.
Does anything that I have described sound like the workings of intellectually superior minds? Or does it sound twisted, diseased and thoroughly evil?
Cloggie on Thu, 20th Sep 2018 10:53 am
Real reason insane conviction le Pen:
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-45590963
“A French court has ordered far-right leader Marine Le Pen to undergo psychiatric tests as part of an inquiry into her sharing images of Islamic State group atrocities.”
You can argue about good taste, but good or bad taste are no matter for a court. Conviction will probably overturned in appeal or lead to a normal fine or warning:
“The case against her stems from French laws against circulating “violent messages that incite terrorism or pornography or seriously harm human dignity” and that can be viewed by a minor.”
It doesn’t matter, she got publicity and there is almost no such thing as bad publicity.
Sissyfuss on Thu, 20th Sep 2018 8:09 pm
” Put simply, there has never been a better time to be alive.” And in 10 years there will never be a worse time.
makati1 on Thu, 20th Sep 2018 9:32 pm
“Most forms of alternative energy depend on the electric grid (nuclear, wind, solar, geothermal, hydropower). But the Grid is falling apart. Most people who care about climate change believe electrifying everything will solve our problems. This energy section of energyskeptic and my book “When trucks stop running” explain why we can’t have a 100% electric grid or run heavy-duty trucks, tractors, harvesters, cement and other construction trucks, logging, mining, and all the other trucks that do the actual work of society via batteries or overhead wires.”
http://energyskeptic.com/2018/munson-edison-to-enron/
Article worth your time to read.
makati1 on Thu, 20th Sep 2018 9:33 pm
Sissyfuss, I’m inclined to agree, unfortunately.