The Future (68 page)
Authors: Al Gore
59
“P&G plunged to $39.37 from more than $60 within minutes”
Ibid.
60
“it was almost like ‘the Twilight Zone’ ”
Ibid.
61
algorithmic echo chamber that caused prices to suddenly crash
Graham Bowley, “The New Speed of Money, Reshaping Markets,”
New York Times
, January 2, 2011; Felix Salmon and Jon Stokes, “Algorithms Take Control of Wall Street,”
Wired
, December 27, 2010.
62
offers to buy or sell must remain open for
one second
Personal conversation with Joseph Stiglitz.
63
would bring the global economy to its knees
Ibid.
64
corrupted and captive ratings agencies, then sold around the world
“ ‘Robo-Signing’ of Mortgages Still a Problem,” Associated Press, July 18, 2011,
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2011/07/18/national/main20080533.shtml
.
65
a practice that’s been popularly labeled “robosigning”
Alan Zibel, Matthias Rieker, and Nick Timiraos, “Banks Near ‘Robo-Signing’ Settlement,”
Wall Street Journal
, January 19, 2012.
66
increasing since 2000 at an average of 65 percent per year
Mark Jickling and Rena S. Miller, “Derivatives Regulation in the 111th Congress,” Congressional Research Service Report for Congress, March 3, 2011, Table I,
http://assets.opencrs.com/rpts/R40646_20110303.pdf
.
67
and campaign contributions to prevent them from being regulated
“Why Derivatives Caused Financial Crisis,” Seeking Alpha, April 12, 2010,
http://seekingalpha.com/article/198197-why-derivatives-caused-financial-crisis
.
68
are continuing to grow at a rate half again faster than global production
Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, “Divided We Stand.”
69
others that linked Europe to the New World and to Asia
Ronald Findlay and Kevin H. O’Rourke, “Commodity Market Integration, 1500–2000,” in
Globalization in Historical Perspective
, edited by Michael D. Bordo, Alan M. Taylor, and Jeffrey G. Williamson (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003).
70
Middle East, trade flows that were largely controlled by Venice and Egypt
Ibid.
71
Europe and Africa—revolutionized the old pattern
Ibid.
72
nineteenth century prior to the First Opium War, which began in 1839
“Hello America,”
Economist
, August 16, 2010 (citing Angus Maddison).
73
Then, when the East gained more access to the new technologies
Derek Thompson, “The Economic History of the Last 2,000 Years in 1 Little Graph,”
Atlantic
, June 19, 2012.
74
“make macro inventions highly productive and remunerative”
Malcolm Gladwell, “The Tweaker,”
New Yorker
, November 14, 2011.
75
“conflict between that interest and any other, that other should yield”
Wayne D. Rasmussen, U.S. Department of Agriculture National Agricultural Library,
“Lincoln’s Agricultural Legacy,” January 30, 2012,
http://www.nal.usda.gov/lincolns-agricultural-legacy
.
76
1789 to a little under 60 percent
U.S. Department of Agriculture, “A History of American Agriculture: Farmers & the Land,” Agriculture in the Classroom,
http://www.agclassroom.org/gan/timeline/farmers_land.htm
.
77
to establish colleges of agriculture and the mechanical arts
Rasmussen, “Lincoln’s Agricultural Legacy.”
78
Every state did so
U.S. Department of Agriculture, “A History of American Agriculture.”
79
every one of the 3,000 counties in the United States
Representative Butler Derrick,
Congressional Record
140, no. 138 (September 28, 1994).
80
global production of eggs has increased by 350 percent
United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization,
World Livestock 2011
,
http://www.fao.org/docrep/014/i2373e/i2373e.pdf
.
81
with 70 million tons annually—four times the production of the United States
Ibid.
82
has increased over the same period by more than 3,200 percent
Ibid.
83
very day that the first space satellite, Sputnik, was launched by the Soviet Union
Brian J. Cudahy, “The Containership Revolution: Malcolm McLean’s 1956 Innovation Goes Global,”
Transportation Research News
, Transportation Research Board of the National Academies, no. 246 (September / October 2006): 5–9,
http://onlinepubs.trb.org/onlinepubs/trnews/trnews246.pdf
.
84
will carry goods from one country to another
Ibid.; Marc Levinson, “Container Shipping and the Economy,”
Transportation Research News
, Transportation Research Board of the National Academies, no. 246 (September / October 2006): 10,
http://onlinepubs.trb.org/onlinepubs/trnews/trnews246.pdf
.
85
now in surplus supply (much as food grains were a few decades ago)
“Plunging Prices Set to Trigger Tech Boom,”
Financial Times
, January 8, 2012; “TV Prices Fall, Squeezing Most Makers and Sellers,”
New York Times
, December 26, 2011.
86
in today’s dollars, would be $8,000
Richard Powelson, “First Color Television Sets Were Sold 50 Years Ago,” Scripps Howard News Service, December 31, 2003,
http://www.post-gazette.com/tv/20031231colortv1231p3.asp
.
87
133 percent, even as jobs have decreased by 33 percent
Energy Information Administration, Annual Energy Review, October 19, 2011,
http://www.eia.gov/totalenergy/data/annual/xls/stb0702.xls
; Mine Safety and Health Administration, Table 3, “Average Number of Employees at Coal Mines in the United States, by Primary Activity, 1978–2008,”
http://www.msha.gov/STATS/PART50/WQ/1978/wq78cl03.asp
.
88
increased significantly over much of that period
John E. Tilton and Hans H. Landsberg, September 1997, “Innovation, Productivity
Growth, and the Survival of the U.S. Copper Industry,” Resources for the Future,
http://www.rff.org/RFF/Documents/RFF-DP-97-41.pdf
.
89
number of hours of labor required to produce a ton of copper fell by 50 percent
Ibid.
90
labor productivity in one of its largest mines by 400 percent
Ibid.
91
New sources of copper were developed in other countries
Matthijs Randsdorp, “A Closer Look at Copper,” November 3, 2011, TCW,
https://www.tcw.com/News_and_Commentary/Market_Commentary/Insights/11-03-11_A_Closer_Look_at_Copper.aspx
.
92
by 500 first-year associates
John Markoff, “Armies of Expensive Lawyers, Replaced by Cheaper Software,”
New York Times
, March 5, 2011.
93
300,000 miles in all driving conditions without an accident
Rebecca J. Rosen, “Google’s Self-Driving Cars: 300,000 Miles Logged, Not a Single Accident Under Computer Control,”
Atlantic
, August 9, 2012.
94
employed in the United States alone as taxi drivers and chauffeurs
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, as cited in the
Statistical Abstract of the United States: 2010
, Table 640,
http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/
.
95
in part for cultural reasons—to go into savings instead of consumption
Mauricio Cardenas, “Lower Savings in China Could Slow Down Growth in Latin America,” Brookings Institution, February 11, 2011,
http://www.brookings.edu/research/opinions/2011/02/11-china-savings-cardenas-frank
.
96
developed through the much older technologies of metallurgy and ceramics
Caltech Materials Science, “Welcome,” 2012,
http://www.matsci.caltech.edu/
.
97
“physical powers which will enable it to super-organize matter”
Eric Steinhart, “Teilhard de Chardin and Transhumanism,”
Journal of Evolution and Technology
20, no. 1 (December 2008): 1–22.
98
the molecular economy
Christopher Meyer and Stan Davis,
It’s Alive: The Coming Convergence of Information, Biology and Business
(New York: Crown Business, 2003), p. 4.
99
experiments in the real world
Ibid., pp. 3–6, 66–67.
100
molecules when they are clustered in bulk
John F. Sargent Jr., “Nanotechnology: A Policy Primer,” Congressional Research Service, April 13, 2012,
http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/RL34511.pdf
.
101
resistance to stains, wrinkles, and fire
Ibid.
102
hospitals guarding against infections
“Nanotech-Enabled Consumer Products Continue to Rise,”
ScienceDaily
, March 13, 2011,
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/03/110310101351.htm
.
103
copper emerged in numerous locations in the same era
Miljana Radivojevića et al., “On the Origins of Extractive Metallurgy: New Evidence from Europe,”
Journal of Archaeological Science
, November 2010.
104
combines high temperatures and some pressurization
Richard Cowen, “Chapter 5: The Age of Iron,” April 1999,
http://mygeologypage.ucdavis.edu/cowen/~GEL115/115CH5.html
.
105
more than 1,000 years later in Britain
“Bronze Age,”
Encyclopaedia Britannica
,
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/81017/Bronze-Age
.
106
4,500 years ago in northern Turkey
Cowen, “Chapter 5: The Age of Iron.”
107
from which it could be made into tools and weapons
Ibid.
108
harder and stronger than bronze
Ibid.
109
not made until the middle of the nineteenth century
Ibid.
110
create an entirely new category of products, including
Jeremy Rifkin,
The Third Industrial Revolution: How Lateral Power Is Transforming Energy, the Economy, and the World
(New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011).
111
store energy and manifest previously unimaginable properties
Pulickel M. Ajayan and Otto Z. Zhou, “Applications of Carbon Nanotubes,”
Topics in Applied Physics
80 (2001): 391–425; Eliza Strickland, “9 Ways Carbon Nanotubes Just Might Rock the World,”
Discover Magazine
, August 6, 2009.
112
already replacing steel in some niche applications
Corie Lok, “Nanotechnology: Small Wonders,”
Nature
, September 1, 2010, pp. 18–21.
113
expected to have wide applications in industry
Dmitri Kopeliovich, “Ceramic Matrix Composites (Introduction),” SubsTech,
http://www.substech.com/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=ceramic_matrix_composites_introduction
.
114
already known processes, mostly in the health and fitness category
“Nanotech-Enabled Consumer Products Continue to Rise,”
ScienceDaily
, March 13, 2011,
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/03/110310101351.htm
; Sargent, “Nanotechnology: A Policy Primer”; Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies, 2012,
http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/RL34511.pdf
.
115
which opens a variety of useful applications
A. K. Geim, “Graphene: Status and Prospects,”
Science
324, no. 5934 (June 19, 2009): 1530–34; Matthew Finnegan, “Graphene Nanoribbons Could Extend Moore’s Law by 10 Years,”
Techeye.com
, September 28, 2011; “Adding Hydrogen Triples Transistor Performance in Graphene,”
ScienceDaily
, September 4, 2011.
116
much debate in the first years of the twenty-first century
Robert F. Service, “Nanotechnology Grows Up,”
Science
304, no. 5678 (June 18, 2004): 1732–34.
117
consequent cell damage—are taken more seriously
Ibid.
118
“nothing about their synergistic impacts”
Ibid.
119
certainly since the discovery of the double helix in 1953
National Research Council, Nanotechnology in Food Products: Workshop Summary (Leslie Pray and Ann Yaktine, rapporteurs, 2009).
120
application of nanotechnology to the development of new materials
Ibid.
121
fibers with 100 times the strength and one sixth the weight of steel
Lok, “Nanotechnology: Small Wonders,” pp. 18–21.
122
until the object is formed in three-dimensional space
“The Printed World: Three-Dimensional Printing from Digital Designs Will Transform Manufacturing and Allow More People to Start Making Things,”
Economist
, February 10, 2011.