If You're Curious About These Questions...
You should listen to this audiobook
- Did you know that our entire modern way of life rests on just four specific materials—and most of us have no idea what they are?
- Have you ever wondered why our total material consumption continues to skyrocket even though our technology is becoming smaller and more efficient?
- Are you curious about the real secret to balancing our massive demand for materials with the urgent need for a more sustainable future?
Listen to Making the Modern World — Free Audiobook
Loading player...
Key Takeaways from Making the Modern World
- Discover how human historical eras are defined by their dominant materials, progressing from prehistoric stone and medieval wood to the quintessential twentieth-century material: plastic.
- Understand why accurate material flow surveys intentionally exclude massive hidden flows, like excavated earth, as well as water and oxygen to focus only on raw materials destined for processing.
- Learn to categorize the modern world's vast material consumption into six crucial groups: biomaterials, construction materials, metals, plastics, industrial gases, and electronics.
- Find out why industrial gases like oxygen, hydrogen, and nitrogen are indispensable raw materials necessary for driving major economic sectors and enabling processes like efficient steel production.
- Grasp the staggering global complexity of everyday devices by tracing how modern supply chains source components from dozens of companies across multiple countries to build a single smartphone.
Learning Tools
Reinforce what you learned from Making the Modern World
Mind Map
Making the Modern World
Material Surveys & Accounting
Core Categories
Hidden Flows
Logical Exclusions
Historical Eras by Material
Prehistoric
Antiquity & Medieval
20th Century
6 Modern Material Categories
Biomaterials
Construction
Metals & Plastics
Industrial Gases
Electronics
Impact Assessment & Recycling
National Flow Tracking
Life-Cycle Assessment (LCA)
Counterintuitive Impacts
Recycling Value
The Dematerialization Paradox
Definition
Complex Substitutions
Increased Total Consumption
Future Outlook & Solutions
Resource Abundance
Economic Limits
Waste Reduction
Promising New Materials
Quiz — Test Your Understanding
Question 1 of 6
Why are water and oxygen typically excluded from quantitative material-flow surveys?
Making the Modern World — Full Chapter Overview
Chapter 1: Recommendation
Chapter 2: Material use surveys must include the raw materials used in every part of the economy.
Chapter 3: The stages of human history are defined by their leading materials.
Chapter 4: The contemporary world devours an enormous range of materials.
Chapter 5: Material-flow accounting becomes simpler with a few methods – and recycling may be more attractive than you expect.
Chapter 6: Using materials more intelligently doesn’t ensure their use will fall – it requires more complex strategies than that.
Chapter 7: We possess the tools to cope with the growing material needs of modern civilization.
Making the Modern World Summary & Overview
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.
Who Should Listen to Making the Modern World?
- Anyone interested in the material flow and consumption of modern society
- Every manufacturer, designer and product developer
Books Similar to Making the Modern World
Readers who enjoyed this also liked these titles.
