Chapter 17

Human Beings: Benign Effects of Transformations

Hubert Engelbrecht

Abstract

The positive effects of industrialisation are summarised as follows: more reliabile sufficient food production, advancement in life sciences (dietetics, hygienics, medicine knowledge and technique, family planning, pharmacology, biology, biotechnology) and public health care (vaccination, immunisation), resulting in slow rise of average life expectancy and well being, and less poverty; decline of burden of communicable diseases; development of continent-wide electric grids and improvement of heating, cooking, and cold storage systems; improvement of physical and virtual mobility, as well as speed of information transfer; replacement of dangerous, exhausting, and monotonous work by machines or robots; improvement of occupational health; reduction of duration of the workweek and immense growth in economic performance; slow increase of general education, specialised knowledge, and of the world intellectual property index; increase of the amount of published scientific papers per annum; general IQ gains; increase of chip performance; progress in risk management, quality of prognoses, forecasts, and of early warning systems, thus preventing damages to life and property; improved performance of artificial photosynthesis and of solar cells; and immense progress in basic research concerning e.g. genomics, the subatomic world, material science, geosciences, aero- and astronautics, and cosmology.

Total Pages: 206-214 (9)

Purchase Chapter  Book Details