Technology and Wealth: The Straw, the Siphon, and the Sieve
Frankly #119
In this week’s Frankly, I explore the relationship between technology and wealth when viewed through a global biophysical lens. I use the visualization of a straw, siphon, and sieve to describe how technology enables the acceleration of physical resource extraction and the concentration and filtering of resulting ‘wealth’ towards the human species. Running contrary to the commonly-held idea that technology automatically creates monetary wealth (and therefore prosperity), this episode asks listeners to view real wealth as the underlying stocks and flows that make life on Earth possible – whether in the form of forests, social trust, or entire functioning ecosystems.
I also discuss the ways that technologies have been deployed to rearrange natural systems around narrow, growth-centric priorities throughout much of human history. Utilizing examples regarding agriculture, finance, and artificial intelligence, I suggest that tools effective at small scales might behave very differently when applied globally – setting us on the path to overshoot that we find ourselves walking today.
If technology reflects human priorities, what does current innovation and development reveal about what we currently value? What would it mean to shift towards prioritizing life-giving flows within natural systems and away from accelerating the liquidation of Earth’s stocks? Finally, how can societies and individuals begin to distinguish between innovation that serves to borrow from our future versus genuine progress toward a more stable world?
In case you missed it…
This week, I was joined by materials expert and investor Craig Tindale, who explores the profound vulnerabilities facing Western economies by what he calls “Industrialization 2.0.” Craig argues that decades of central banking policies favoring consumption and short-term returns have led the West to offshore virtually all materials production and processing to China – limiting the West’s ability to defend itself, as well as rebuild industrial capacity to address the growing technological needs of climate and AI. Tindale also introduces his “four clocks” framework, which describes how corporate quarterly cycles, 10-20 year climate urgency, immediate defense needs, and continuous consumption addiction are all ticking at different speeds and pulling society in incompatible directions. Furthermore, he posits that Silicon Valley’s “unspoken bet” is on human obsolescence, with capital flowing to robot owners rather than human workers.
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had to rewind to get this quote, it is so good! "Wild biomass has declined sharply, large animals replaced by people livestock infrastructure.
The technosphere, cement, buildings, plastics, etc now outweighs all living things on earth grasses trees everything alive is outweighed by things humans have built
From the perspective of GDP this looks like success
From the perspective of the living world, the great simplification has already happened."
Nate, i found this extremely useful. The clarity presented at this level of abstraction was superb…and
you are fond of using the term “Rube Goldberg” to describe overly complicated, creaky, mechanisms of getting things done. This refers originally to drawings by an American cartoonist, Rube Goldberg, popular in the 1930’s. I would bet Rube Goldberg is a cultural meme outside the Overton window for most of your listeners either due to age or location outside US.
What do you think?