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The Next Industrial Revolution is the emerging
transformation of human industry from a system
that takes, makes, and wastes to one that celebrates
natural, economic, and cultural abundance.
The First Industrial Revolution
The industrial framework that dominates our lives
now is fairly primitive. It is conceived around
a one-way manufacturing flow—what is known
as a "cradle to grave" lifecycle. This
cradle to grave flow relies on brute force (including
fossil fuels and large amounts of powerful chemicals).
It seeks universal design solutions ("one
size fits all"), overwhelming and ignoring
natural and cultural diversity. And it produces
massive amounts of waste—something that in
nature does not even exist.
Consider looking at the industrial revolution
of the 19th century and its aftermath as a kind
of retroactive design assignment, focusing on
some of its unintended, questionable effects.
The assignment might sound like this: Design a
system of production that
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Puts billions of pounds of toxic material
into the air, water, and soil every year |
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Produces some materials so dangerous they
will require constant vigilance by future
generations |
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Results in gigantic amounts of waste |
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Puts valuable materials in holes all over
the planet, where they can never be retrieved
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Requires thousands of complex regulations
to keep people and natural systems from being
poisoned too quickly |
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Measures productivity by how few people
are working? |
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Creates prosperity by digging up or cutting
down natural resources and then burying or
burning them |
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Erodes the diversity of species and cultural
practices |
Does this seem like a good design assignment?
Even though none of these things happened intentionally,
we find this "design assignment" to
be a limited and depressing one for industries
to perpetuate—and it is obviously resulting
in a much less enjoyable world.
A New Design Assignment
We are proposing a new design assignment where
people and industries set out to create the following:
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Buildings that, like trees, are net energy
exporters, produce more energy than they consume,
accrue and store solar energy, and purify
their own waste water and release it slowly
in a purer form. |
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Factory effluent water that is cleaner than
the influent. |
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Products that, when their useful life is
over, do not become useless waste, but can
be tossed onto the ground to decompose and
become food for plants and animals, rebuilding
soil; or, alternately, return to industrial
cycles to supply high quality raw materials
for new products. |
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Billions, even trillions of dollars worth
of materials accrued for human and natural
purposes each year. |
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A world of abundance, not one of limits,
pollution, and waste. |
Welcome to the Next Industrial Revolution.
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