By Dr. Jay Lehr June 6th, 2022 Books, Technology 35 Comments
If you have time to read two books in the coming year make them THE CLOUD REVOLUTION and FOSSIL FUTURE. The first is reviewed below and the other review will appear next week here at CFACT.org. FOSSIL FUTURE will arm you for life with the information to discuss the human caused climate change FRAUD with neutral friends who will listen. THE CLOUD REVOLUTION will disabuse you of lingering pessimism resulting from the present world takeover of truly communist factions hoping to destroy capitalism. You will become the most popular among your friends as you succeed in raising their hopes for the future.
As a sidebar to my readers who think I am being too strident mentioning Communism, let me quote Alexander Trachtenberg, the head of the American Communist Party at a rally in Madison Square Garden, New York City in 1944.
“ When we get ready to take the United States, we will not take you under the label of Communism. We will not take you under the label of Socialism…We will take the United States under labels we have made very lovable, we will take it under Liberalism, under Progressivism, under Democracy. But take it we will.”
In the United States they are doing this under the guidance of billionaires, Bill Gates, Michael Bloomberg, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg and most of the jet setters who just attended the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland. There they continued their plot to change the world into a system they can rule. You see, many if not most, mega-rich people are sure they can run your life and the world better than you, or us, because they so cleverly made tons of money. Surprisingly, they have nothing, tangibly, to look forward to in the future, having all that money can buy, other than Increased Power. They know that only Communism, by whatever its name they choose, can achieve this for them. Capitalism with all its faults can not readily become a Tyranny, though the current US administration is doing its best to make it so.
These two books I am recommending, if not insisting you read in the coming months, will arm you to be a great warrior on behalf of liberty, both to fight the climate change, anti-fossil fuel fraud, while lifting yourself and your friends out of the pessimism gripping our nation. Both are extremely well written comprehensive texts, but both are 400 page books. Few will be able to look forward to a quick read. I strongly recommend my own 10 pages a day reading plan for great books. That way you you become energized daily with new, often exciting information, that whets your appetite for the next days read.
So now on to Mark Mills’ masterpiece, The Cloud Revolution.
When I review books, I always calculate the number of references and notes as it is a quick indicator of how comprehensive the author went about his work. Mark’s Cloud Revolution has 823 of them which puts it in the top 10 of all books I have reviewed over the years (which is about 500). This is a result of my having had a book review column in the journal of Groundwater for 25 years.
I was particularly interested in Mark’s detailed acknowledgements in order to learn of all the folks who helped him. Hillary would not have been a total idiot when she said, “it takes a village”, had she been talking about outstanding books.
The conventional wisdom on how technology will change the future is wrong, argues Mark Mills in his book The Cloud Revolution, who lays out a very different and hugely optimistic vision of our future. The mainstream forecasts, which you should try and avoid, fall into three very wrong scenarios, all quite pessimistic: the new normal getting food from a motorcycle driver and buying a car with a Bitcoin is as good as it gets; a dystopian future with jobs destroyed by robots and the digital world leveling business; 3- a technically ignorant world where wind, solar power and electric cars reign.
According to Mills, a convergence of technologies will drive an economic boom over the coming decade (editors note: when we get rid of the power in the hands of this administration, which we surely will). Not a single invention will make this so, but a convergence of new knowledge in three primary domains: microprocessors, materials, and machines.
Microprocessors are increasingly embedded in everything. Materials from which everything is built are emerging with near magical qualities, and machines are undergoing a complimentary transformation. Accelerating and enabling all of this is the Cloud, history’s biggest infrastructure which is itself based on the building.
Blocks of next generation microprocessors and artificial intelligence (AI). On this term (AI) he writes how exaggerated its malevolence is. Happily Mills explains its terminology to have been a big mistake offering false fears.
In doing so he explained the similarities of the technologies that first brought forth the Roaring 20’s where information (telephones), materials (plastics and pharmaceuticals ), and machines (cars and power plants) launched a great century—in spite of the wars that held us back as wokism is doing today.
The world of techno-pessimists leads to demands for more government control, socialized medicine, more mandates to achieve preferred social outcomes and far bigger safety nets. Very different actions are called for if you believe instead that a new boom is imminent, and that unbridled capitalism (there are no true fee markets, only freer ones) is the only mechanism that can unlock the complex and intertwined dynamic of markets that leads to a new mass flourishing. (Editors note: I do not usually write notes in my reviews but both authors Mills and Epstein in their books mentioned the unusual word “flourishing” so you will find the definition below. It is a must for Epstein’s book as it uses it more than 3 dozen times).
The new normalists don’t see anything on the horizon with potential economic or social impacts equivalent to the dawn of electrification or plumbing. To counter these folks who may make up a majority, its not enough to explain that progress has always happened. Its also not enough to just list amazing inventions because inventions and services yet to emerge won’t be on any such list. We need hard evidence to counter the new normal claim. This is clearly the purpose of Mark Mills’ wonderful book in which he succeeds beyond what I thought possible.
This time at the center of the information journey we find not a single tool like the radio or telephone or the smart phone. We instead find the microprocessor, a general purpose information tool whose sizes range from a spec in one’s eye, to a dinner plate, all with capabilities ranging from simple counting to a main-frame of old on a single chip. They are the building blocks of The Cloud.
Less aware to the average citizen is the fact that today instead of relying on a fixed catalogue of available materials or undergoing trial and error attempts to come up with new ones, engineers can turn algorithms running in super computers to design unique materials, based on a “material genome” with properties tailored to a specific need.
This book is, in effect, a survey of the patterns, evidence, and implications of revolutions in technology’s three spheres which are, microprocessors, materials and machines. Mills does not attempt to catalogue every consequential innovation, instead he focuses on key innovations that either instigate or typify foundational changes. He builds on the famous business philosopher Peter Drucker who believed that the future is built on the past. Mills says “Our near future was invented in the recent past.” You may be amazed by how many great inventors were actually building on the work of past folks with less ability to promote their genius.
While in the exploration of the recent past, Mills does mention specific companies and individuals but he makes clear that he does not wish to pick winners or losers. Of course, its the entrepreneurs, investors and business leaders who literally capitalize on and thus socialize the benefits of revolutionary innovations. His purpose, however, is to reveal the overall scope and depth of the epoch-shifting innovations now coming.
Mills divides his book into four parts: explaining how many things can be forecast; describing the nature of the Cloud that so few understand; focusing on the revolutions occurring in information, materials and machines; and speculates on how these things will impact activities, business, work, travel, health, safety and entertainment.
Of course anything that purports to be a forecast faces the familiar aphorism that has been attributed to everyone from Nostradamus and Mark Twain to Niels Bohr and Yogi Berra: “Prediction is very difficult, especially if its about the future.”
Buy The Cloud Revolution, read it a little at a time and you will thank me. You are welcome.
Note 1- Human Flourishing is defined as an effort to achieve self actualization and fulfillment within the context of a larger community of individuals, each with the right to pursue his or her such efforts.
Note 2: Portions of this article were excerpted from the book THE CLOUD REVOLUTION: How The Convergence of NEW TECHNOLOGIES Will Unleash The Next ECONOMIC BOOM and a ROARING 2020s with permission of the author Mark Mills and the publisher Encounter Books. I strongly recommend this book to everyone fighting for the preservation of life in America. It has been made possible by our abundance of fossil fuels. Now the leftist, liberal, progressives and yes communists are attempting to limit the well being of human-kind.
CFACT Senior Science Analyst Jay Lehr has authored more than 1,000 magazine and journal articles and 36 books. Jay’s new book A Hitchhikers Journey Through Climate Change written with Teri Ciccone is now available on Kindle and Amazon.
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