Rethinking Humanity (2020)
Five Foundational Sector Disruptions, The Lifecycle of Civilizations, and the Coming Age of Freedom
We are on the cusp of the fastest, deepest, most consequential transformation of human civilization in history.
About this Book:
Rethinking Humanity: Five Foundational Sector Disruptions, the Lifecycle of Civilizations, and the Coming Age of Freedom
During the 2020s, key technologies will converge to completely disrupt the five foundational sectors that underpin the global economy, and with them every major industry in the world today. In information, energy, food, transportation, and materials, costs will fall by a 10x or more, while production processes an order of magnitude more efficient will use 90% fewer natural resources with 10x-100x less waste.
James Arbib & Tony Seba (RethinkX), June 2020
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Rethinking Humanity is seminal. Whether you run a company, a city, or a nation state, you need to understand the simple patterns that drive complexity, disruption, and change in human history. The future belongs to those societies who can both make the right technology choices and reorganize their governance and belief systems to capture the exponentially growing opportunities in front of us.
- Jose Cordeiro, Director, Millenium Project; ViceChair, Humanity Plus; Candidate for the European Parliament
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5 Dormehl, L. (2017, June 26). “Apple should pull the plug”: 10 iPhone predictions from 2007. Cult of Mac. Retrieved from https://www.cultofmac.com/488334/10-iphone-predictions-2007/.
7 Gupta, R. (2016, May 9). Nokia CEO ended his speech saying: “We didn’t do anything wrong, but somehow we lost”. LinkedIn. Retrieved from https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/nokia-ceo-ended-his-speech-saying-we-didnt-do-anything-rahul-gupta/?trk=v-feed.
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10 Statista. (2020, February 27). Nokia’s Net Sales 1999-2019 [Data File]. Retrieved from https://www.statista.com/statistics/267819/nokias-net-sales-since-1999/.
11 Rosenfeld, M. J., Thomas, R. J., & Hausen, S. (2019). Disintermediating your friends: How online dating in the United States displaces other ways of meeting. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 116(36), 17753–17758. Retrieved from https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1908630116.
12 Carson, B. (2017, April 14). Uber booked $20 billion in rides in 2016, but it’s still losing billions. Business Insider. Retrieved from https://www.businessinsider.com/uber-2016-financial-numbers-revenue-losses-2017-4?r=US&IR=T.
13 Damodaran, A. (2014, June 18). Uber Isn’t Worth $17 Billion. FiveThirtyEight. Retrieved from https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/uber-isnt-worth-17-billion/.
14 Shahan, Z. (2020, January 19). Tesla Model 3 = 7th Best Selling Car In USA. Clean Technica. Retrieved from https://cleantechnica.com/2020/01/19/tesla-model-3-7th-best-selling-car-in-usa/.
15 United States Department of Commerce and Labor. (1909). Statistical Abstract of the United States, Table 224: Prices of Domestic Iron.Washington D.C.: Government Printing Office. Retrieved from https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=FilUAAAAIAAJ&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false.
16 Bramley, A (2015, December 3). How Chicago’s Slaughterhouse Spectacles Paved The Way For Big Meat. NPR. Retrieved from https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2015/12/03/458314767/how-chicago-s-slaughterhouse-spectacles-paved-the-way-for-big-meat.
17 Smil, V. (2013). Making the Modern World: Materials and Dematerialization. Hoboken, New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons.
18 Gross, D. (1997). Forbes: Greatest Business Stories of All Time: 20 Inspiring Tales of Entrepreneurs Who Changed the Way We Live and Do Business. Hoboken, New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons.
20 Calder, L. (2001). Financing the American Dream: A Cultural History of Consumer Credit. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press.
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22 Jamal, H. (2017, January 22). Road Construction Machinery – Uses of Road Construction Tools and Equipment. About Civil. Retrieved from https://www.aboutcivil.org/road-construction-machinery.html.
23 U.S. Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations. (1995, September). Significant Features of Fiscal Federalism: Budget Processes and Tax Systems (Report No. M–197). Washington D.C.: USACIR. Retrieved from https://library.unt.edu/gpo/acir/SFFF/sfff-1995-vol-1.pdf.
24 Kinney, T. A. (2004). The Carriage Trade: Making Horse-Drawn Vehicles in America. Baltimore, Maryland: Johns Hopkins University Press.
25 Long, W. (1903, August 4). “New Bills: Motor-Cars Bill (Lords)”. UK Parliament. House of Commons. Hansard. 4(126). Retrieved from https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1903/aug/04/motor-cars-bill-lords.
26 Carriage Association of America. (1904, April). The Carriage Monthly. (40). Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: Ware Brothers Publishing.
27 Carriage Association of America. (1912, December). The Future of the Horse Vehicle. The Carriage Monthly. (48). Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: Ware Brothers Publishing. From Kinney, T. A. (2004). The Carriage Trade: Making Horse-Drawn Vehicles in America. Baltimore, Maryland: Johns Hopkins University Press.
28 Edwards, A. (1943, June 30). Sixteenth Census of the United States: 1940, Comparative Occupation Statistics for the United States 1870-1930. Washington D.C.: United States Government Printing Office. Retrieved from https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=TdVhgiJVYAQC&pg=PA126&lpg=PA126&dq=garage+laborer+1910+1920&source=bl&ots=EiHGgR25AR&sig=ACfU3U3OikyYx4-m5rvUtLZz66jfrk1law&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwio0cmQrfnoAhWjo3EKHfPWCW8Q6AEwAXoECAoQAQ#v=onepage&q=garage%20laborer%201910%201920&f=false.
29 Smil, V. (2013). Making the Modern World: Materials and Dematerialization. Hoboken, New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons.
30 Donlan, T. G. (2008, May 8). A World of Wealth: How Capitalism Turns Profits Into Progress. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Financial Times Press.
31 Kinney, T. A. (2004). The Carriage Trade: Making Horse-Drawn Vehicles in America. Baltimore, Maryland: Johns Hopkins University Press.
32 Edwards, A. (1943, June 30). Sixteenth Census of the United States: 1940, Comparative Occupation Statistics for the United States 1870-1930. Washington D.C.: United States Government Printing Office. Retrieved from https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=TdVhgiJVYAQC&pg=PA126&lpg=PA126&dq=garage+laborer+1910+1920&source=bl&ots=EiHGgR25AR&sig=ACfU3U3OikyYx4-m5rvUtLZz66jfrk1law&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwio0cmQrfnoAhWjo3EKHfPWCW8Q6AEwAXoECAoQAQ#v=onepage&q=garage%20laborer%201910%201920&f=false.
33 Olmstead, A. L., & Rhode, P. W. (2001). Reshaping the Landscape: The Impact and Diffusion of the Tractor in American Agriculture, 1910-1960. The Journal of Economic History, 61(3), 663–698. JSTOR. Retrieved from https://www.jstor.org/stable/2698132?seq=1.
34 Jackson, K. (1987, April 16). Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of the United States. Oxford, United Kingdom: Oxford University Press. Quoted from Poleg, D. (2019, October 31). Rethinking Real Estate: A Roadmap to Technology’s Impact on the World’s Largest Asset Class. New York, New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Also, here: Locke, J. L., & Wright, B. (2019). The American Yawp: A Massively Collaborative Open U.S. History Textbook. The Affluent Society, II: Rise of the Suburbs (Vol. 2). Palo Alto, California: Stanford University Press. Retrieved from http://www.americanyawp.com/text/26-the-affluent-society/.
35 Nicolaides, B., & Wiese, A. (2017). Suburbanization in the United States after 1945. Oxford Research Encyclopedias, American History. Retrieved from here.
36 Henderson, L. (2010). America’s Roadside Lodging: The Rise and Fall of the Motel. Historia, 19, 23–43. Retrieved from https://thekeep.eiu.edu/historia/17/.
37 Craven, W. F., & Cate, J. L. (1984). The Army Air Forces in World War II: Men and Planes (Vol. 6). Chicago, Illinois: University of Chicago Press. Retrieved from https://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/AAF/VI/index.html.
38 Jackson, D. (2020, February 27). Ford Motor Car Company in World War Two. US Auto Industry World War Two. Retrieved from http://usautoindustryworldwartwo.com/ford.htm.
40 How did the Fall of Constantinople change the Renaissance in Italy? Daily History. Retrieved from https://dailyhistory.org/How_did_the_Fall_of_Constantinople_change_the_Renaissance_in_Italy%3F
41 Byrne, J. P. (2017). The World of Renaissance Italy. Santa Barbara, California: ABC-CLIO
42 Matula, J. (2006). John Argyropoulos and his Importance for the Latin West. Philosophica, (7). Retrieved from https://www.academia.edu/10099943/14._John_Argyropoulos_and_his_importance_for_Latin_West. Hay, D. (1961) The Italian Renaissance in its Historical Background. Cambridge, United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press. Goddu, A. (2010, January 25). Copernicus and the Aristotelian Tradition Education, Reading, and Philosophy in Copernicus’s Path to Heliocentrism. Leiden, Netherlands: Brill.
43 Daley, J. (2016, May 11). Five Things to Know About the Diamond Sutra, the World’s Oldest Dated Printed Book. Smithsonian Magazine. Retrieved from https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/Five-things-to-know-about-diamond-sutra-worlds-oldest-dated-printed-book-180959052/.
44 Mach, A. (2011, October 10). Christopher Columbus: Five things you thought you knew about the explorer. Christian Science Monitor. Retrieved from https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/2011/1010/Christopher-Columbus-Five-things-you-thought-you-knew-about-the-explorer/MYTH-Queen-Isabella-of-Spain-sold-the-crown-jewels-to-pay-for-Columbus-s-voyage.
45 Kurlansky, M. (2016). Paper: Paging Through History. New York, New York: W. W. Norton & Company.
46 Kovarik, B. (2015). Revolutions in Communication: Media History from Gutenberg to the Digital Age. New York, New York: Bloomsbury Publishing USA.
47 Ibid
48 Ibid
49 The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica. Mainz. Encyclopaedia Britannica. Retrieved from https://www.britannica.com/place/Mainz.
50 Kurlansky, M. (2016). Paper: Paging Through History. New York, New York: W. W. Norton & Company.
51 Tucker, D. H., Unwin, P. S., & Unwin, G. (2017, November 15). History of publishing – The age of early printing: 1450–1550. Encyclopaedia Britannica. Retrieved from https://www.britannica.com/topic/publishing/The-age-of-early-printing-1450-1550.
52 Chase-Dunn, C., & Lerro, B. (2013). Social Change: Globalization from the Stone Age to the Present. Abingdon, United Kingdom: Routledge.
54 The Mysterious World. Top 9 Most Amazing Cave Paintings. Retrieved from https://themysteriousworld.com/top-10-most-amazing-cave-paintings-in-the-world/.
55 Tellier, L.-N. (2009). Urban World History: An Economic and Geographical Perspective. New York, New York. Springer International Publishing
56 Kane, S. (2016, March 18). The human race once came dangerously close to dying out – here’s how it changed us. Business Insider. Retrieved from https://www.businessinsider.com/genetic-bottleneck-almost-killed-humans-2016-3?r=US&IR=T.
57 Scott, J. C. (2017). Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States (1 edition). New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press. Retrieved from https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Against_the_Grain.html?id=AJYuDwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=kp_read_button&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false.
62 Morris, I. (2011). Why the West Rules – for Now: The Patterns of History and What They Reveal About the Future. London, United Kingdom: Picador.
63 Ibid
64 Mark, J. J. (2019, September 20). Bronze Age Collapse. Ancient History Encyclopedia. Retrieved from https://www.worldhistory.org/Bronze_Age_Collapse/
65 Morris, I. (2011). Why the West Rules – for Now: The Patterns of History and What They Reveal About the Future. London, United Kingdom: Picador.
66 Taagepera, R. (1979). Size and Duration of Empires: GrowthDecline Curves, 600 B.C. to 600 A.D. Social Science History, 3(3/4), 115-138. Retrieved from https://www.jstor.org/stable/1170959?seq=1.
67 Schwartz, R. K. (2004, October). All Roads Led to Rome: Roman Food Production in North Africa. Repast, 4, 5–9.
68 Morris, I. (2011). Why the West Rules – for Now: The Patterns of History and What They Reveal About the Future. London, United Kingdom: Picador.
69 Frankopan, P. (2015, August 27). The Silk Roads: A New History of the World. Oxford, United Kingdom: Bloomsbury Publishing.
70 Ibid.
71 Rockström, J., Steffen, W., Noone, K., Persson, Å., Chapin, F. S. I., Lambin, E. F., Lenton, T. M., … & Foley, J. (2009). Planetary Boundaries: Exploring the Safe Operating Space for Humanity. Ecol Soc, 14(2). Retrieved from https://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol14/iss2/art32/
72 De Luce, I. (2019, August 13). Coca-Cola is sold in all but 2 countries on Earth. Here’s what their ads look like around the world. Business Insider Malaysia. Retrieved from https://www.businessinsider.my/what-coca-cola-ads-look-like-around-the-world-2019-8.
73 Levinson, M. (2008). The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press.
74 Ibid.
75 World Shipping Council. (2019, July). Top 50 World Container Ports. Retrieved from https://www.worldshipping.org/about-the-industry/global-trade/top-50-world-container-ports.
76 Marketplace Pulse. (2019, December 16). Marketplaces Year in Review 2019. Retrieved from https://www.marketplacepulse.com/marketplaces-year-in-review-2019.
77 International Renewable Energy Agency. (2020, March 31). Renewable Capacity Highlights. Retrieved from https://www.irena.org/-/media/Files/IRENA/Agency/Publication/2020/Mar/IRENA_RE_Capacity_Highlights_2020.pdf?la=en&hash=B6BDF8C3306D271327729B9F9C9AF5F1274FE30B.
78 Hansen, S. (2020, March 26). The Rise and Fall of General Electric (GE). Investopedia. Retrieved from https://www.investopedia.com/insights/rise-and-fall-ge/.
79 Iron Matrix. (2019). Why We’re Different. Retrieved from http://www.ironmatrix.com/.
81 British Library. Overview. East India Company. Retrieved from http://www.eastindiacompany.amdigital.co.uk/Introduction/Overview. Blakemore, E. (2019, September 6) How the East India Company became the world’s most powerful business. National Geographic. Retrieved from https://www.nationalgeographic.com/culture/article/british-east-india-trading-company-most-powerful-business.
82 Center for Responsible Politics. Elections Overview: Did Money Win? OpenSecrets.org. Retrieved from https://www.opensecrets.org/elections-overview/did-money-win.
85 Rouleau, G. (2016, April 1). Simulating The 2016 Baseball Season. MathWorks. Retrieved from https://blogs.mathworks.com/simulink/2016/04/01/simulating-the-2016-baseball-season/.
87 Elkington, J., Lim, J., & Smith, L. (2016). Breakthrough Business Models: Exponentially more social, lean, integrated and circular. Volans; Business and Sustainable Development Commission. Retrieved from https://volans.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/Volans_Breakthrough-Business-Models_Report_Sep2016.pdf.
88 Scott, J. C. (2017). Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States (1 edition). New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press. Retrieved from https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Against_the_Grain.html?id=AJYuDwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=kp_read_button&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false.
89 Ibid.
91 Harari, Y. N. (2017). Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow. London, United Kingdom: Harvill Secker.
92 Bouratinos, E. (2018). Science, Objectivity, and Consciousness. Princeton, New Jersey: ICRL Press.
94 Rodgers, D. T. The Progressive Era to the New Era, 1900–1929. The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History. Retrieved from https://www.gilderlehrman.org/history-resources/essays/progressive-era-new-era-1900-1929.
95 Massaro, R. (2020). 2020 Silicon Valley Index. Joint Venture Silicon Valley, Institute for Regional Studies. Retrieved from https://jointventure.org/download-the-2020-index.
97 Welch, D. & Naughton, K. (2020, April 13). Fear of an Impending Car-Price Collapse Grips Auto Industry. Bloomberg. Retrieved from https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-04-13/fear-of-an-impending-car-price-collapse-grips-the-auto-industry.