Making the Modern World Buchzusammenfassung - das Wichtigste aus Making the Modern World

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Zusammenfassung von Making the Modern World

Name: Making the Modern World
Rating: 3.8 (32 reviews)
Author: Vaclav Smil

Vaclav Smil

Materials and Dematerialization

3.8 (32 Bewertungen)

17 Min.

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Making the Modern World
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Kernaussage 1 von 6

What’s in it for me? Change the way you think about your daily use of materials.

Shelter, clothes, tools, furniture, devices – the list of materials we encounter on a daily basis can seem endless. In fact, without giving it much thought, we are all constantly using a myriad of different materials, all of which make up our modern world. So, how can we begin to understand this expanding and increasingly complex use of materials?

In these blinks, you’ll take a journey through the evolution of human material uses, and learn which materials should be taken into consideration when we analyze the basic building blocks of the world today.

You’ll learn about the extraction and production of materials, and how material consumption is a major cause of environmental pollution, which we can help by reducing our current material dependence.

You’ll also learn

what the quintessential twentieth century material is;
how many tons of paper were used to design the Boeing 747 airplane; and
why we’ll never run out of sand or silicon.

Material use surveys should include the raw materials used in every sector of the economy.

From the production of clothes to houses to all manner of electronics, the sheer variety of materials used by modern-day humans is dizzying. But how can we determine which materials to take into account when analyzing our modern material flow?

Well, no human material use survey would be complete without considering agricultural and forestry-derived products, as well as metals, industrial gases and non-renewable organics.

Back in 1882, the US Geological Survey, or USGS, began preparations for one of the first reports on material flows ever conducted for an entire country. Their survey grouped materials into major categories and covered the period between 1900 and 1995.

The categories, of course, included all raw materials derived from agriculture, including cotton, seeds, wool and tobacco; everything the forest industry produced, like wood and paper; and finally metals, minerals and non-renewable organics derived from fossil fuels, like asphalt, waxes and oils.

To these, the author would suggest adding industrial gases, because such materials are essential to our modern methods of production. Other than that, USGS classifications are still valid today.

So, breaking material surveys down into such categories is a long-standing procedure; but it only works because it only assesses raw organic materials that are designated for further processing, while omitting oxygen, water, food, fuel and all hidden material flows.

Hidden material flows are all the materials extracted during a production cycle that don’t end up in finished products, like all the earth and rocks that are moved to reach a mineral deposit. Materials like this would actually account for the vast majority of total material flow in countries with large mineral-extracting industries.

So, water isn’t listed for quantitative reasons, because it would overshadow practically all other materials; leaving oxygen off the list makes sense because it’s practically an inexhaustible element of the earth’s atmosphere; and food as well as fuel are excluded because they have historically been analyzed separately, and aren’t quite materials but instead finished products.

The eras of human history are marked by their dominant materials.

You need only watch a bird building a nest to know that humans aren’t the only creatures to use materials in creative ways. But what is unique to human material use is its overall extent and complexity – a fact that dates back to prehistory.

The prehistoric, ancient and medieval eras were characterized by the use of wood, stone and metal, respectively.

The modern world consumes a tremendous variety of materials.

With new roads built daily and countless packages mailed every hour, the day to day of modern society relies on a never-ending and highly diverse supply of materials. But which material categories are most important? There are six in total.

The first two major groups of modern materials are biomaterials, and those used for construction.

Material-flow accounts are made easy with a few tricks – and recycling might be more appealing than you think.

Do you know where the different components of your smartphone came from? Well, in the case of Apple's iPhone 5, the constituent parts were made by over 20 different companies, operating factories in 12 countries spread over three continents!

While the iPhone isn't the only product with such a complicated assembly pattern, it's a prime example of how material accounting can quickly become a challenge.

Using materials in a smarter way doesn't guarantee it'll diminish their consumption – it takes more complicated approaches than that.

If you looked up the verb “dematerialize” you’d think that it holds supernatural connotations: the Oxford English Dictionary defines it as becoming free of physical substance. However, for our purposes, dematerialization isn’t about completely eliminating a material, but rather making substantial reductions in the use of materials.

For instance, consider how much less paper the world consumes since the computerization of archives.

We have the means to handle the rising material demands of modern civilization.

Increasing populations and improved quality of life have meant a steadily rising demand for materials across the board. But how long can and will this trend continue? And in the face of such increases, how can we limit material consumption?

First of all, the world runs no risk of exhausting its supply of any major material. That’s because the ones common to construction like sand, clay and stone are tremendously plentiful, meaning there’s no threat of a shortage. Also, supplies of silicon, the electronic age’s signature material are comparably abundant.

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Worum geht es in Making the Modern World?

Making the Modern World (2014) is a guide to humanity’s material consumption through history and into the future. These blinks explain the major material categories of our time and how we can effectively manage them as we move forward.

Bestes Zitat aus Making the Modern World

[... We] will have to…redefine the very notion of modern societies whose very existence is predicated on incessant and massive material flows.

—Vaclav Smil

Wer Making the Modern World lesen sollte

Anyone interested in the material flow and consumption of modern society
Every manufacturer, designer and product developer

Über den Autor

Vaclav Smil is an interdisciplinary researcher who has authored over 30 books and nearly 500 papers on energy, environmental and demographic change, food production, technical innovation, risk assessment and public policy. He is currently a Distinguished Professor Emeritus at the University of Manitoba and, in 2010, Foreign Policy named him among the top 50 global thinkers.

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