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Dudley attempts to impose a pattern on the entire history of human civilization. He shows how the major transformations in the character of social life have been determined by eight significant innovations: four new ways of dealing with information - writing, printing, mass media and integrated circuits; and four new ways of organizing the applications of violence - metal weapons, artillery, steam transport and heavy cavalry. Military and informational technologies are so crucial because they are instrumental in holding states together, while innovation in itself tends to produce new...

This book highlights the contribution of language standardization to the economic rise of the West between 1600 and 1860. Previous studies have been unable to explain why during this period almost all industrial innovation was confined to small areas around the main cultural centers of three Western states - Britain, France, and the United states.

What does it take for a society to be able to innovate? The question is crucial today when an increasing share of world patents are taken out by countries such as Japan, South Korea and China, which have limited energy resources and cultures very different from those in the West. However, most previous studies of the beginnings of industrialization have focused on the resources and institutions of Britain alone. As a result, they have missed the lessons to be learned from casting the net more widely so as to examine all regions of the North-Atlantic community. This book pinpoints the...