9 ACCELERATION TO WHAT EXTENT HAS THE MODERN REVOLUTION BEEN A POSITIVE OR A NEGATIVE FORCE?

Transcription

1 9 ACCELERATION TO WHAT EXTENT HAS THE MODERN REVOLUTION BEEN A POSITIVE OR A NEGATIVE FORCE?

2 UNIT 9 ACCELERATION CONTENTS UNIT 9 BASICS 3 Unit 9 Overview 4 Unit 9 Learning Outcomes 5 Unit 9 Lessons 6 Unit 9 Key Concepts LOOKING BACK 8 What Happened in Unit 8? KEY CONTENT 10 Threshold 8 The Modern Revolution 11 Threshold 8: The Modern Revolution 13 The Industrial Revolution 14 The Industrial Revolution 15 How Did Change Accelerate? 16 Acceleration 17 How Was the Modern World Created? 18 The Anthropocene 19 Collective Learning (Part 4) 20 A Big History of Everything 21 Smith, Marx, and Keynes LOOKING AHEAD 23 What s Next in Unit 10? 2

3 UNIT 9 OVERVIEW Key Discipline: History Timespan: Industrialization accelerated around 1750 CE Driving Question: To what extent has the Modern Revolution been a positive or a negative force? Threshold for this Unit: Threshold 8: The Modern Revolution 3

4 UNIT 9 LEARNING OUTCOMES By the end of Unit 9, students should be able to: 1. Describe accelerating global change and the factors that describe it. 2. Understand the key features that define the Anthropocene. 3. Describe how economies have developed and changed since the Industrial Revolution. 4

5 UNIT 9 LESSONS 9.0 Acceleration In the last 500 years, our world has undergone a dramatic transformation. The speed of communication and transportation have accelerated, leading to greater interconnection of the four world zones. The consequences have been in the pace of innovation, collective learning, and the human appetite for energy. 9.1 The Anthropocene For the first time in the history of the biosphere, a single species can effect major change on a global level. The Industrial Revolution has led us into the modern world. In the opinion of many, we are on the brink of a new threshold: the Anthropocene. 9.2 Changing Economies Smith, Marx, and Keynes are three of the most important economic thinkers of the Modern Revolution. These men had great influence on modern thinking about commerce, labor, and the global economy. 5

6 UNIT 9 KEY CONCEPTS Anthropocene epoch artisan biosphere capitalism climate change collective learning commerce communications communism competitive market energy exchange networks fossil fuel globalization industrialization Industrial Revolution Innovation Marxism Modern Revolution monopoly steam engines 6

7 LOOKING BACK

8 WHAT HAPPENED IN UNIT 8? No major threshold was crossed in Unit 8, but the events described were very important to the story of Big History. We learned: How innovation and collective learning helped people from distant world zones connect and interact with one another. How systems of exchange and trade made the world a smaller place. How the Afro-Eurasian world zone gained power. About the stories, new ideas, and new technologies explorers brought home with them after they traveled to far corners of the world. 8

9 KEY CONTENT

10 THRESHOLD 8 THE MODERN REVOLUTION Video For most of the Agrarian era, the various agrarian civilizations had little contact with or knowledge of agrarian civilizations in the other world zones. The lack of global connections was an impediment to innovation and growth. The linking of the four world zones enabled the exposure of people cultures, ideas, foods, plants, and diseases from the other world zones. This increased the exchanges between the different zones and increased the possibilities for innovations. The modern world as we know it developed from these changes. BIG HISTORY PROJECT / UNIT 6 / EARLY HUMANS 10

11

12

13 THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION Video The industrial revolution happened at about the same time as the American, French, and Haitian Revolutions, but it focused more on economics than politics. This revolution transformed how people lived, how goods were made, and how economies operated. Before the Industrial Revolution, 80 percent or more of people were involved in agriculture. The Industrial Revolution ushered in an era of wage labor. People moved from the countryside to the cities, and the numbers of people doing agricultural work began to decline in many parts of the world. The Industrial Revolution began in England around 1750, and this revolution was characterized by the introduction of machines into the manufacturing process. Fossil fuels came to be the energy source for these machines. The economies of India and China dominated the world textile market prior to the Industrial Revolution. The innovations introduced in English factories, coupled with the fact that British could transport their products virtually anywhere, help explain why European countries surpassed India and China in this period. BIG HISTORY PROJECT / UNIT 8 / EXPANSION & INTERCONNECTION 13

14 THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION Article / Cynthia Stokes Brown The Industrial Revolution is the name given to a series of economic and social changes first observed in England about 250 years ago when the English began using coal, a fossil fuel. Steam engines used coal and water to power locomotives, steamboats, and machines in factories. Using fossil fuels allowed humans to generate huge amounts of power. While the Industrial Revolution was born in England, its effects soon spread to the rest of Europe, America, Russia, and Japan. Industrialized countries needed raw materials for factories and markets for finished goods, so they began conquering non-industrialized countries to gain access to resources and markets. These unequal relationships have had lasting impact: there are significant differences in income, life expectancy, birth rates, and levels of education between industrialized and nonindustrialized countries today. 14

15 HOW DID CHANGE ACCELERATE? Video Talk / David Christian The modern era is characterized by acceleration. This is shown most clearly by the dramatic rise in human population in the last 200 years. Acceleration has been driven by three important factors: The breakdown of barriers between the four world zones, which made a truly global, network possible. The rise of commerce and markets, where competition spurred innovation that was critical for success. New sources of energy, primarily fossil fuels, which powered these expanding networks and new connections. 15

16 ACCELERATION Article / Cynthia Stokes Brown The increasing speed of expansion of the Universe provides evidence of acceleration at the cosmic level. On Earth, we see acceleration when we look at the rate of human population growth, the pace of human history, the expansion of humans global economy, and the rate of human consumption of fossil fuels. Technology may provide the clearest example of acceleration in human life: From the introduction of the worldwide web in 1990, to the introduction of the ipad in 2010, there is an enormously long list of new technologies that have been introduced in recent decades. These technologies have facilitated access to increasingly large amounts of information, as well as increasing the speed of human communication. 16

17 HOW WAS THE MODERN WORLD CREATED? Video Talk / David Christian Humans have become the most powerful force for change in the world. Some change has been positive: there have been increases in life expectancy, literacy rates, and gender equality. Other change has been negative: there have been world wars, atomic bombs, and gaps in living standards between the industrialized and nonindustrialized worlds. In the modern world, innovations in food production and economic expansion have resulted in an unprecedented rise in human population without the declines typical of the agrarian era. Some scholars argue that the Earth has entered a new age, the Anthropocene. This name reflects the dominant role that humans play in the modern world. 17

18 THE ANTHROPOCENE Article / Cynthia Stokes Brown The Anthropocene is the name proposed by scientists for a new geological epoch. They believe that the human impact on the biosphere is so profound that this new geological epoch ought to be created to distinguish it from earlier times when the human impact was not as great. These scientists cite the movement of plants into new regions, glacial melting, the increase of CO₂ in the atmosphere, and changes in the chemistry of the oceans as evidence of the nature of human impact. While change should be expected to result from the geologic and climatic processes that take place naturally in the biosphere, change in a number of areas is greater than expected, and many see humans as the cause. Some of these changes, like increases in carbon in the biosphere, can happen without human intervention, but humans can also contribute to the rise of carbon in the atmosphere by burning fossil fuels. 18

19 COLLECTIVE LEARNING (PART 4) Article / David Christian Collective learning has increased exponentially in the postindustrial world because: The current global population of 7 billion humans is connected in a single network. It s possible to travel and exchange goods across the entire planet in the space of a single day. Uneven distribution of knowledge has led to greater inequalities in wealth and power than ever before. Collective learning has turned humans into a species capable of transforming the entire biosphere. 19

20 A BIG HISTORY OF EVERYTHING Video Innovation in transportation, production technologies, and communication were critical to the making of the Industrial Revolution and led to an acceleration of rates of innovation and collective learning. Oceans provided the first links between the four world zones. Although travel by sea was slow, these new connections led to larger and more diverse networks, conditions critical for the growth of collective learning. Metals brought by meteors, fuels produced by ancient plants, and water all combined to initiate the Industrial Revolution and thus accelerate human innovation because all of these ingredients were combined to create the steam engine, one of the most critical innovations of the Industrial Revolution. The Industrial Revolution ushered in a era of innovation and an explosion of collective learning. During the era of the steam engine, it took 150 years for humans collective knowledge to double. Innovations in communication technology and the ongoing expansion of communication networks means that it now only takes two years for collective knowledge to double and by 2020 it will take only about 72 hours. 20

21 SMITH, MARX, AND KEYNES Article / Daniel Adler A number of important economic thinkers emerged during the Modern Revolution. Their ideas had a tremendous influence on government policies and world events in the twentieth century. Adam Smith, an eighteenth century philosopher, is considered by many to be the father of capitalism. He wrote about the benefits of a division of labor the idea of breaking down a job into smaller parts, with each performed by one person for increasing efficiency in the production process. He also wrote positively about self-interest in economics. Karl Marx is considered the father of communism. In his writings, he criticized what he saw as the excesses of capitalism, with its focus on profit and efficiency and what he saw as a disregard for the worker. John Maynard Keynes was an important twentieth century economist. His observations of the economic crash of the Great Depression led him to argue that government had the resources to stimulate an economy during difficult economic times. He believed that certain economic conditions required governments to step in and use their resources to create jobs and stimulate economic growth. 21

22 LOOKING AHEAD

23 WHAT S NEXT? In Unit 10, we will do something that historians typically do not do: make predictions about what will happen in the future. We will: Remember what we ve learned so far on our 13.8-billion year adventure. Join some of the world s great thinkers to try to predict the next threshold. Identify important, unanswered questions about where we re going. 23