#industrial-revolution — Public Fediverse posts

The fact that many university-educated computer science and business majors don't understand the Social and political changes around the Industrial Revolution makes me think we aren't teaching enough humanities in university.
#education #AI #industrialrevolution

@rainynight65 @cabel Don’t think she knows what she’s saying..

The industrial revolution was about deskilling, removing power #labour used to have, and concentrating it in the hands of those who owned the machines

This is the same plan #AI industrialists have right now

It isn’t one bit worth to celebrate. No teacher worth their salt should be praising it

The #industrialrevolution plunged majorities of citizens into poverty for 4 generations before they took control back!

WITNESS HER

https://piefed.social/c/historymemes/p/2015810/witness-her

@ukwaterways
We often visit our granddaughter who lives with her Mum in Sale and stay for a few days in a cottage that was probably built in the 1770s and sits on the towpath of the Bridgewater Canal at Preston Brook. The building of the Bridgewater Canal kick-started the Industrial Revolution and the cottage was built at what was to become its junction with the Trent and Mersey Canal. There's a whole lot of history there which I'm beginning uncover in this article.

#canallife #towpath #cottage #prestonbrook #bridgewater #canal #brickwork #history #industrialrevolution

They yearn for it even today

https://piefed.social/c/historymemes/p/1949620/they-yearn-for-it-even-today

Nvidia’s CEO Jensen Huang says what TSMC does is “almost impossible to replicate.”

Elon Musk just announced a $25 billion chip factory that aims to do exactly that.

Target: 50x more AI computing power than the entire global industry combined.

Who’s right?
🧵👇

https://www.thenovtech.com/p/musk-just-announced-a-25b-chip-factory

#ElonMusk #Semiconductors #Terrafab #AI #Manufacturing #SpaceX #Tesla #Nvidia #Technology #Innovation #AIInfrastructure #SpaceTech #FutureTech #TechNews #IndustrialRevolution

Slaveship Earth: Capitalism’s Secret 500-Year Climate History

https://piefed.social/c/collapse/p/1919380/slaveship-earth-capitalisms-secret-500-year-climate-history

The responses I got from Bluesky:

* HMS Apollypon by Gus L (https://dungeonofsigns.blogspot.com/search?q=HMS+Apollyon)
* Magical Industrial Revolution (https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/291774/magical-industrial-revolution)
* Swyvers ("Dickensian heists", https://melsonian-arts-council.itch.io/swyvers)
* Unicorn Meat (the adventure, https://throneofsalt.itch.io/unicorn-meat).
* Savage Worlds Holler (https://peginc.com/savage-settings/holler/, Appalachian setting)
* Miseries & Misfortunes (https://www.burningwheel.com/collections/miseries-misfortunes, 1648 France)

#osr #nsr #ttrpg #victorian #industrialrevolution #gaslamp #steampunk #ElectricBastionland #incunabuli

Bidding farewell to the Ironbridge Gorge Museum Trust.
As the site prepares to enter a new era, Ironbridge's collections team reflects on how the pioneering, community-led charity brought the birthplace of the #IndustrialRevolution to life.

https://www.museumsassociation.org/museums-journal/people/2026/02/bidding-farewell-to-the-ironbridge-gorge-museum-trust/# #globalmuseum #museums #history

Please give me suggestions for OSR settings, systems, blog posts, etc. for playing games set in the industrial revolution era, or a bit later. 1700s up to gas lamp, I guess.

I've been reading the amazing https://incunabuli.com again. And there's Electric Bastionland of course. What else?

Edit: Frontier Scum probably counts.

#osr #nsr #ttrpg #industrialrevolution #steampunk #gaslamp #ElectricBastionland #incunabuli

#capitalism #history #IndustrialRevolution

Give them a break, they're catching up

https://piefed.social/c/historymemes/p/1421554/give-them-a-break-they-re-catching-up

Never underestimate the human capacity for screwing others over

https://piefed.social/c/unions/p/1409034/never-underestimate-the-human-capacity-for-screwing-others-over

Never underestimate the human capacity for screwing others over

https://piefed.social/c/historymemes/p/1409032/never-underestimate-the-human-capacity-for-screwing-others-over

History of Tallow: Ancient Beginnings to Modern Uses

Tallow has a fascinating and rich history that dates back thousands of years, spanning cultures and continents. Its versatility made it a staple for cooking, lighting, and skincare in societies around the world. Here’s a look at how tallow has evolved and earned its place in history.

Excerpt:

"#Indigenous Cultures: Reverence for Tallow

#IndigenousPeoples in North America, #Australia, and other parts of the world also utilized tallow.

- Native Americans: Rendered fat from buffalo and other animals was used for cooking, preserving foods like pemmican, and as a protective balm for the skin.
- Australian Aboriginals: Tallow from native animals was used in traditional medicine and as a moisturizer to guard against the sun and wind.


The #IndustrialRevolution: Decline and Adaptation

With the advent of industrialization in the 18th and 19th centuries, the demand for tallow shifted:

- Soapmaking: Tallow became a primary ingredient in mass-produced soaps, replacing traditional homemade versions.
- Lighting: Tallow candles were gradually replaced by kerosene lamps and, later, electricity.
- Cooking Fats: Vegetable oils like margarine and shortening began to compete with tallow for culinary use.

Despite these shifts, tallow retained its importance in rural areas and traditional practices because of it’s ease of access especially in cities and regions close to farmlands.


The 20th Century: A Decline in Popularity

As industrialization progressed, tallow and tallow butter fell out of favor for a few reasons:

- The Rise of Synthetic Alternatives: #Petroleum-based products and #synthetic skincare formulations became widely available.
- Dietary Trends: The popularity of plant-based oils led to a decline in the use of animal fats in cooking and skincare.
- Perception of Fats: Animal fats were stigmatized in the mid-20th century due to health concerns, causing people to shy away from tallow."

Read more:
https://articles.creekwoodnaturals.com/history-of-tallow-ancient-beginnings-to-modern-uses/

#SolarPunkSunday #AnimalProducts #TraditionalArts #TraditionalUses #AnimalFat

#GoldmanSachs sees AI as the #NextBigThing and isn’t blinking as it dumps investments into the #ArtificialIntelligence abyss... Analysts expect AI adoption to lift U.S. #LaborProductivity by 15% "once the #technology takes hold", and while #economics ( and environmental costs) are dubiously dirty & egregiously expensive, getting on board now is cheaper bet for itchy #Investors than missing out on the next #IndustrialRevolution.

https://www.ne16.com/t/9649975/217644891/8114710/0/1009235/?f5d63f87

Is the AI spending frenzy just another dot-com bubble? Jim Cramer says no. He argues the AI surge is more like an industrial revolution, with strategic investments fueling real innovation and productivity across industries. This boom isn’t speculation; it’s foundational change. Dive deeper here: https://www.cnbc.com/2025/09/28/cramer-why-the-crazy-spending-of-this-ai-boom-isnt-like-the-dot-com-bubble.html #JimCramer #AI #industrialrevolution #technology #investing #dotcombubble

These questions about the #IndustrialRevolution as presented by Robert Tombs in his "The English and Their History" will always remain a guideline for the social sciences - since the answers to them inevitably depend on the individual theoretical approach.
#economics

THE OUTDOOR MUSEUM…
The presence of the past. Look around, and you see it here and there in farmers fields, in the cities and in rural towns.

Here, near the southeastern Tasmanian town of Cygnet, lie relics of the Industrial Revolution, the age of steam power and the coming of the gasoline engine — the time of mechanical machines, the time that made us what we are now.

A rusting traction engine with its big fly wheel decays through the decades next to an early gasoline powered road roller. The traction engine was built by a London company. The road roller is Australian from back in the time when such things were made in this country.

And there they pass the years and the decades, relics of a time when we learned to turn thermal energy into mechanical energy and the long tail of technology that leads to where we are now.

#Tasmania #Cygnet #Technology #machines #IndustrialRevolution

What do platforms really do? 

In 1986, David S. Landes wrote the essay, ‘What Do Bosses Really Do?’. He argues that the historical role of the ‘boss’ was an essential function for organizing production and connecting producers to markets. Digital platforms have become the new bosses. Platforms have the same functions of market creation, labor specialization, and management, but they have replaced the physical factory floor with algorithmic management. While their methods are novel, platforms are the direct descendants of the merchant-entrepreneurs and factory owners Landes described, solving the same historical problems of production in remarkably similar ways.

So, why am I posting this on my own blog and not on a “platform”? I don’t view writing as a financial transaction. It is a hobby. By putting the financialization lens front and center, platforms are killing the mental space for hobbies. When you monetize tweets, you create incentive to craft tweets that create engagement in particular ways. Usually not healthy ways. 

If we think of old media or traditional manufacturing, we can compare them to guilds. Guilds kept up prices and controlled production. With the simplification of tasks factories could hire workers who weren’t as highly skilled but didn’t need to be. Nowadays, why should any newspaper or TV channel’s output be limited by the amount of airtime or page space they have?

Platforms take unskilled and train them. We are in the age of specialization of ideas.  Akin to the “the advantage of disaggregating a productive process”  Platforms leverage this by having many producers explore the same space through millions of different angles. This allows the platform to “purchase exactly that precise quantity of [skill] which is necessary for each process” —paying a viral star a lot and a niche creator a little, perfectly matching reward to market impact. Which is to say platforms make money through whatever sticks.  

In Landes’s essay, Management became specialized, today management will become algorithmized. Platforms abstract away the issues that factory owners had such as embezzlement of resources, slacking off etc. Platforms don’t care how much or how little you produce, or even if you produce. If you do, the cash is yours (after a cut of course). 

This may lead to a visceral reaction against platforms. This week when Substack raised a substantial amount they called the writers “the heroes of culture”. This should ring at least a tiny alarm in your head. The platform’s rhetoric of the creator-as-hero is a shrewd economic arrangement. In the putting-out system, the merchant-manufacturer “was able to shift capital expenditures (plant and equipment) to the worker”. Platforms do the same with creative risk. The writer, artist, or creator invests all the time and labor—the “capital” of creation—upfront. If they fail, they bear the entire loss. The platform, like the putter-outer, only participates in the upside, taking its cut from the successful ‘heroes’ while remaining insulated from the failures of the many.

So what do platforms really do? They have resurrected the essential role of the boss for the digital age. They are the merchant-manufacturers who build the roads to market, and they are the factory owners who discipline production—not with overseers, but with incentive algorithms. By casting the creator as the hero, they obscure their own power and shift the immense risks of creative work onto the individual. While appearing to be mere background IT admins, they are, in fact, the central organizers of production, demonstrating that even in the 21st century, the fundamental challenges of coordinating labor and capital persist, and solving them remains, as it was in the 18th century, a very lucrative role.

What Do Bosses Really Do?, David S. Landes, The Journal of Economic History, Vol. 46, No. 3 (Sep., 1986), pp. 585-623 (39 pages). https://www.jstor.org/stable/2121476

#algorithmicManagement #Business #capitalism #creatorEconomy #digitalLabor #economicHistory #economics #futureOfWork #history #IndustrialRevolution #Leadership #management #monetization #philosophy #platforms #Startups #Substack #techCriticism #technology #writing

https://www.fromoldbooks.org/Brennecke-AltEngland/pages/137-english-manufacturing/

The working title i had for this picture was Mordor,! There ought to be boys on the corner of the street in their sparking clogs.

Source: _Alt-England: Eine Studienreise_ by Adolf Brennecke, c. 1885. The title means Old England: A Study Tour (h/t Google Translate).

#fobo #Victorian #cityscape #industrialRevolution #pollution #chimney #city #mordor

Not posted for a while because i’ve been posting for the #GIMP account & mastodon makes it hard to switch accounts!

How the end of #carboncapture could spark a new #industrialrevolution

https://theconversation.com/how-the-end-of-carbon-capture-could-spark-a-new-industrial-revolution-257894

If the word “ #singularity” signifies a period where the development of #technology becomes uncontrollable and irreversible, we’ve really been in it since the beginning of the #IndustrialRevolution.