ABSTRACT
Humanity has an ancient and intense relationship with technology. Technology is associated with industrial pollution, but at the same time it can help reduce pollution. Warnings about technology include the wings of Icarus that enabled him to fly to the heavens but brought about his death. The meaning “study of mechanical and industrial arts” such as “spinning, metal-working, or brewing” was first recorded in the mid 1800s. Slavery, capitalism and technology are interrelated. The economic historian, C. Knick Harley, says it is commonly asserted that the West Indies slave trade financed the Industrial Revolution in England, based on Eric Williams’ seminal work Capitalism and Slavery. Nikolai Kondratieff believed that the crises that punctuate periods between cycles in capitalism were indicative of a clearing away of debris to allow for new technological and economic growth, rather than leading to the inherent doom predicted by Karl Marx. The meta-trend, the mother narrative, is carbon-fuelled expansion.
