● Speed: How It Explains the World
Vaclav Smil
Review via The Wall Street Journal
We are often told that the speed of innovation today is faster than ever before and accelerating exponentially. But as we prod and marvel at our smartphones or develop parasocial relationships with our chatbots, it’s useful to remember that a few decades spanning the turn of the 20th century saw the invention of lightbulbs, the electric automobile, home refrigeration and powered flight. How fast are we really going now by comparison? And is faster necessarily better?
That is the question posed in “Speed,” a marvelously encyclopedic book by Vaclav Smil, an environmental scientist and professor emeritus at the University of Manitoba.