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Medieval agrarian : 12th to 18th century
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Industrial : 18th to 20th century
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Cognitive : 21st-22nd century
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Materials
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Wood, stone, iron. Iron was mainly a military
material (swords and armour). After the departure for the
crusades (1096), its use spreads to agriculture (shovels,
pickaxes, rakes, harrows, scythes). The iron ploughshare
allows major land clearings
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Steel (for all machinery), then concrete (a
symbol of major cities), copper (for electricity and
plumbing), rubber (for tyres), then aluminium (for
aeronautics). Power is measured in millions of tons of
steel, coal or oil
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Birth of a diversity of materials. Many thousand
varieties of polymers, elastomers, glues..., in all
imaginable forms : threads for reinforcements (Kevlar,
carbon), fibres for textiles (polyester), membranes for
inflatable structures (mylar), foams for padding of
mattresses, seats..., isolation of partitions...
(polyurethane). One can almost create custom-made polymers,
able to meet a predetermined specification. Alloys,
ceramics, composites, glass increase the potential
adaptability of matter even more. Thus, the manufacturer has
a surfeit of choices, it becomes necessary to use databases
and "cost-analysis" methods to know where he stands.
Generally materials become lighter in all fields
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Energy
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Animal traction (yoke). The windmill known since
Roman times as a milling tool, is used to cut wood, power
smith's bellows, to mill cloth... It is
pre-industrialization, tested out and spread by the
Cistercian monasteries
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Steam engine (for trains and motive power for
factories), then the internal combustion engine (for the
car) and the jet engine (for aircrafts). The source of
energy is chemical : combustion. The industrial system will
continue developing until exhaustion of combustible deposits
(coal, oil, gas)
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Networking of electricity and harnessing of
energy. Energy wastage of industrial society (up to 7 tons
oil equivalent per inhabitant and per year, or 117 times the
average weight of a human being at 60 kg decreases, as
resources are not inexhaustible. Electrical techniques
(micro-waves, plasmas, chopped currents) allow supply of
energy in precisely required quantity exactly where needed,
and causing less pollution (for example electric or hybrid
cars). Electrification also means immediate availability,
therefore a change over one generation, of system of
household appliances - lighting, refrigerator, washing
machines, household robots...
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Life & Nature
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Nature Seed and animal selection, prompted by the
first agronomy manuals circulating between monasteries.
Agriculture takes off from the level where the crop is just
sufficient to resow, once population and animals have been
fed. Deforestation caused by land clearings. Agrarian
systems develop until the land is saturated (1315)
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Vaccination (Pasteur), followed by antibiotics
(Fleming) lessen microbial diseases. The industrialization
of agriculture, of animal husbandry, of fishing increases
productivity and depopulates the countryside. The pollution
risks make necessary the constitution of protected areas
(national parks) and the development of green technologies
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Biotechnology can directly interfere with the
chemical molecules constituting living creatures, not only
observing and displaying their form and composition on
computer, but also, cutting, grafting, creating hybrids. The
prospective of manufacturing to order living beings equipped
with predetermined capacities, to order, confronts humanity
with vital responsibilities of greater complexity than ever
before. Having impoverished its natural heritage through
industrialization and tropical deforestation, it will
undoubtedly need to compensate by enriching it with
artificial species, able to form stable and complete
ecosystems (biospheres) among themselves
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Rythms
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The village bell rings the seven canonical hours.
Life in the fields passes in rhythm to these hours as was
the case already for life in the monasteries. Mechanical
clocks appears
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Chronometry in the "scientific" organization of
work, the time scale is measured in tenth of seconds:
separation of tasks, monitoring, mass production
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The time scale of a microprocessor is measured in
billionth of seconds, that of an optic computer in million
billionth of seconds. Human perception remains at a level of
a tenth of a second. Computers are already from ten to a
hundred million times faster than the human brain, on which
they can impose their rhythms. They immerse their subjects
in virtual reality universes designed either for teaching
technical know-how (piloting, surgery, etc.) or for
ensnaring them (video games, etc.)
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Space &trade
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Reconstitution of local and regional markets
(11th-12th centuries). The stern post rudder (1242)
facilitates the progress of merchant shipping, notably in
the Baltic : establishment of a Hanseatic system (13th
century) around Lübeck, Danzig, Königsberg...
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Railways, car, aircraft : space becomes smaller.
One can go from one town on earth to another in less than a
day. World market for basic products (petrol, steel,
non-ferrous metals, coffee, cocoa, timber, etc.), for
capital goods (machine-tools), and consumer goods (cars,
cameras, etc.)
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After a phase of urban implosion, new conquest of
inhabitable space, made possible by the generalization of
telepresence (videophones, etc.) in real or deferred time,
and the skill to create local, autonomous biospheres.
"Challenge-towns" fit for habitation - in inhospitable
areas, on the oceans, in interstellar space, etc. Trade is
no longer concerned with bulky staple commodities, but with
artistic or technical creations, data held in databases, the
programming of future achievements. Distances are no longer
physical but cultural : the difficulty to be understood in
another language or another culture
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Communication & education
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Technical information is communicated in Latin,
thanks to the work of copiers, within the transnational
network of the monasteries. Charlemagne's school. Birth of
the critical university (scholastic)
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Printing initially has religious consequences
(Protestantism), then literary (classical age) then
technical from the 18th century on (the Encyclopaedia) ;
spread of a technical culture. Universal education project
after 1850
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Telephony - the web of the telecommunication
network creates a kind of "planetary brain". It is possible
to get in touch with anyone immediately and everywhere, by
sound or image. The new technical system develops up to a
level of saturation of the human mind. Individuals have to
protect themselves against communication. Mass education
teaches how to navigate in a sea of knowledge. It is
stimulated by personal contact with teachers, but it
operates within the terrain of a cultural heritage stored in
artificial memories (laser discs and others)
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Social territory & organizations
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The earth is the basis of the resources necessary
for family, village, feudal survival. It is therefore at
stake during battle. The object of ownership, it is passed
on to descendants. The feudal hierarchy, a military caste,
is the protector of the land, autarchic guarantor of
security. Market towns are created to develop trade,
organized on an "isonomic" model, first in the Hanseatic
League, then in Mediterranean region (Genoa, Venice)
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The means of production (factories,
machinery...), i.e. capital, form the basis of resources.
Survival depends on production, supplies and outlets. This
sphere is unstable. One has to be active to maintain one's
position. The Nation-State preserves economic and social
security; companies assume the risks. Beginning of a
separation of powers, necessary for openness to innovation
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The resource base which ensures survival is
personal know-how. It can be concerned with leading-edge,
sophisticated technology or on the contrary go back to an
ancestral knowledge, such as the art of surviving amidst ice
floes or in the desert. It requires many years to acquire
it, there is constant risk of obsolescence and, unlike the
former heritage, it can only be transmitted through effort.
Wealth is an internal attribute. Intellectual property is
one of the possible legal statutes of this new heritage.
Development of protective organizations, with a separation
between the three powers (judiciary, legislature and
executive). The notion of business is extended from
profit-making organizations to other organizations which
still have to balance their resources and their expenditure.
They support explorations and creations
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