Did Anyone Predict the Industrial Revolution?

lostfutures.substack.com

16 pointspaulpauper3 comments

None of these thinkers predicted industrialization as a systemic economic transformation such as rising wages, urbanization, demographic shifts, the factory system.

They all saw the machines but not the world those machines would create. That leap seems to have been unpredictable from within an agrarian mental framework.

through out history many people recognised the idea of disruptive technology and ideas as a threat, just as they do today, and that is why change periods are called "revolutions". And then as now, the "thinkers" ha!, are predicting that they can hold back the tide by evermore brutal mindless violence on a population that can see the hand in front of there face, the genie is useing the lamp to roast up a few status "crows" for lunch. yum yum.

TLDR, people in the 1670s roughly understood how an internal combustion engine could work but never built one. They were able to extrapolate that to modern-ish cars, boats and manufacturing but not the social impact.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com