I have been struggling to organize my thoughts on the subject of the challenge that artificial intelligence in its present forms of generative artificial intelligence (gAI) and agentic artificial intelligence (aAI). I finally realized it was going to require several posts and I don’t believe I can put what’s going on now into its proper perspective without a brief discussion of the Industrial Revolution. In this post, the first in a series, I will discuss the Industrial Revolution with a special focus on three individuals who made notable contributions to its evolution: Josiah Wedgwood, Joseph Marie Charles dit (nicknamed) Jacquard, and Henry Ford.
The Industrial Revolution, a term coined by the French and popularized by the historian Arnold Toynbee, refers to the technological, economic, and cultural changes that began in the early 18th century in Britain and spread east to France, Germany, the Soviet Union, and, eventually, China and India. In some senses it’s still taking place.
Josiah Wedgwood (1730-1795)
Josiah Wedgwood (1730-1795) was at the forefront of this development. He started as a potter, becoming a master potter. As you are presumably aware, craftsmen, e.g. potters, weavers, metalsmiths, etc., began as apprentices, working for a master, then became journeymen, and finally masters in their own right. Their works were one-offs. Such a process was inevitably labor intensive.
While recovering from smallpox, he read and studied, learning everything he could about his craft. He invented new recipes for pottery, specially creamware, glazes, and new methods for making dinnerware. He used assembly lines in his factories, the products making their way from pressing (or pouring) clay into molds, decorating them, glazing them, and firing them. His factories were the first in Britain to use steam power.
The price point of his products was such that his market expanded beyond the rich to the middle class. Importantly, he employed advertising and direct mail to sell his products. He created a distribution network. At the time of his death he employed almost 300 people and was one of the wealthiest commoners in Britain.
Joseph Marie Charles dit Jacquard (1752-1834)
Illiterate until he was 13, Jacquard worked as a bookbinder, a type-founder, a maker of cutlery, a soldier, and, finally, a weaver. He invented a treadle loom, a loom for weaving fishing nets, and, eventually, capitalizing on the inventions of others, the “Jacquard” mechanical loom. Although the invention was perfected by Breton, who corrected the punch card driving mechanism, by 1812 there were 11,000 Jacquard looms in France. As inventor Jacquard received a royalty of 50 francs for each loom sold.
By 1830 there were at least an additional 8,000 Jacquard looms in Britain. Each loom was operated by a single individual.
The enormous savings in labor produced by the Jacquard loom expanded the market for fabrics woven with them beyond the wealthy to the growing middle class.
Henry Ford (1863-1947)
Henry Ford did not invent the automobile. He did not invent the assembly line (cf. Josiah Wedgwood above). He did invent something referred to as “Fordism”, ensuring that the automobiles he manufactured were inexpensive enough that the men who worked in his plants could afford to buy them.
In 1880 there were roughly 15,000 people working in blacksmithing in the U. S. By 1908, the year in which Henry Ford introduced the Model T, that number had already declined considerably, a victim of mail order commerce among other things.
By 1930 there were 600,000 people employed in the automobile industry.
What the Industrial Revolution Wrought
There are several themes emerging from the preceding discussion. Yes, the Industrial Revolution produced great wealth for a few people. But not only did it not destroy jobs, it created an enormous number of jobs and, contrary to images of “Satanic mills”, those jobs paid decent wages, at least they did in places where the vision of the owners extended to expanding the markets for the goods they were producing so that ordinary people could buy them.
Excuse me, but the Industrial Revolution created great wealth for everyone, even the poor, inner city, feral blacks are Kangs, compared to pre-industrial agricultural workers.
The Industrial revolution also made possible modern medicine, science, engineering, and modern democratic societies. The history of technology is that engineers do something, and scientists create a new science to explain why it works. Thermodynamics is the classical example.
Every society before the Industrial Revolution was a slave society, and that specifically includes classical Athens, ancient Israel, and every one of the English colonies on the East Coast. California, proud to acclaim that it never had slavery, actually still has a form of slavery in its agricultural fields.
There is also the issue of income equality. A large manufacturing base is absolutely necessary for income equality, because manufacturing is a high profit, high tax revenue, high wage business. Despite the assembly line, it also puts a premium on education and skills.
We, and Europe, are now deep into deindustrialization, and the absolutely required growth of income inequality in any service economy is well entrenched. And the service economy has not only given us inequality, it is a prime mover behind falling real incomes, birth rates, falling falling marriage rates, failed educational systems and rising illiteracy, social disfunction and disorder, and loss of legitimacy by our government. There is no American people today, none.
Trump and others see reindustrialization as an economic problem. It is actually a democracy and quality of life problem.
bob sykes: Excuse me, but the Industrial Revolution created great wealth for everyone
Not everyone. There was great economic and social dislocation that resulted in extreme poverty. Factory workers often lived in dire conditions. Overproduction led to market crashes, leaving farmers destitute and factories closed. Over the long run, conditions improved due to increased productivity, but not everyone benefited at the time.