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Riding the wild horse of technology
Britain and America Led
Britain led the first Industrial Revolution and dominated for a hundred and fifty years. The United States followed. Both were better at riding that wild horse than other countries were.
The Rough Ride
The ride was rough. Millions of peasants were uprooted from the farms where they had always lived and landed in cities, discontented and exploited, and the old institutions that managed discontent and legitimized the state worked less well in the new setting. The side effects included the Communist Party, the killing of a hundred million people, and both world wars.
The Information Revolution
The information revolution brings its own stresses. In American society there is a reaction against tech, including an anti-data-center movement. The relationship between achievement and order has broken down because the new technology creates a new kind of world that needs a new kind of order. Infrastructure is the bridges and the physical things. Info structure is the institutional, legal, and regulatory framework that lets AI give better results to patients in a hospital or transform the legal system, and it takes a new kind of social imagination to build.
Why did early industry uproot so many peasants?
In Britain the enclosure movement consolidated common land into private farms, and farm work needed fewer hands. At the same time, mills and factories in towns such as Manchester offered wages that farms did not. Britain's 1851 census was the first in the world to show more people living in towns than in the countryside. The shift left cities with crowded housing and little in the way of sanitation or public services.
How did Britain adapt institutions to the factory?
Parliament passed the Factory Act of 1833, which limited the hours of child workers and created inspectors to enforce the limits. The Reform Act of 1832 extended the vote to more of the middle class, and later reforms widened it further. Trade unions were given clear legal protection in 1871. Public Health Acts in the 1840s and 1870s then pushed towns to provide sewers and clean water.
Why did workers smash machines in 1811?
The Luddites were textile workers in the English Midlands who attacked mechanized looms that threatened their wages and trades. The movement ran from 1811 to 1816. The British government sent thousands of troops into the affected counties. Parliament made machine breaking a capital offense with the Frame Breaking Act of 1812.
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