trail wrote:
Andrewmc wrote:
Just started The Box by Marc Levinson. It's amazing. The impact of the shipping container might be greater than any other industry wide innovation. It shaped economies, adjusted structural changes in manufacturing supply chains and changed industries and sectors
Though it's interesting in terms of COVID discruptions, that that system is so incredibly efficient and lean that it's taking years to compensate for just a few months of disruptions (maybe a few months is hyperbole given stuff is still going on in China, etc), but I believe most of the disruption was caused by the few months of "hard lockdown" early in the spring of 2020.
I'm reading
The Future Eaters by Tim Flannery. Not a new book (1994), but it covers the anthropology (and a good amount of botany, zoology, geology) of the Oceania/Australia area. With the central theme, referenced by the title, being how the humans (aborigines, maoris, et al) destroyed much of the natural habitat that would have been helpful for them to thrive into the future (a thesis contested by other scientists, apparently). It reads a bit like
Gun, Germs, and Steel. A bit dry at times, but pretty interesting overall.
Many of the Polynesian islands ended up with overpopulation leading to resource crisis often followed by wars cannibalism etc.
They constantly try to escape from the darkness outside and within
Dreaming of systems so perfect that no one will need to be good T.S. Eliot