Word: steams
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COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE England led the Industrial Revolution and fed it with natural resources from its colonies. The pace of technological innovation was extraordinary and included the steam engine and the Bessemer steel converter. England produced more steel, locomotives and textiles than anyone else. Its economy grew fourfold from 1851 to 1911. Since the British pound was tied to gold, it was a global currency and helped make England the center of international banking...
COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE This expansion was electrically powered. As the decade began, about half of all factories were electric, the rest mostly using steam. But by decade's end, more than 80% were on electricity. Household earnings rose; unemployment averaged 4.7%. Car ownership grew from 8 million to 24 million. In 1928 Herbert Hoover declared, "We in America are nearer to the final triumph over poverty than ever before in the history of any land." Oops...
...suited for the job. Topography is destiny out here. It is the only region in North America where falling water has no outlet to the ocean (it lies trapped, then evaporates back into the atmosphere). The thin, spreading crust of the valley floors is notoriously unstable, agitated. Hot springs steam up through faults and fissures. Whirling dust devils dance across the flats. The mountain ranges are new, still rising, alive; perched on top of this tectonic tumult, the structures of civilization seem to teeter. The schools and supermarkets are surrounded, as often as not, by fresh-dug earth, and what...
...this sense, the real-world competition is rarely human vs. machine, as it was with Kasparov. It's one kind of tool vs. another kind of tool.Thus the steam drill wasn't really challenging John Henry; it was challenging his sledgehammer. It's the guy using the steam drill who was challenging John Henry. Similarly, the bank teller's competitor is not so much the atm as the people who design the machine or those who build it or service it. Functionally speaking, they're just bank tellers using new tools. And that's all the old bank teller really...
...John Henry is too dramatic a metaphor. People rarely die trying to outrun technology. They usually adapt, moving either up the skills-and-income scale or down it. Perhaps a better metaphor is Virginia Lee Burton's classic children's story of Mike Mulligan and his steam shovel, Mary Anne. Outmoded by diesel models, Mary Anne retires in the cellar she has just dug for the new town hall. She becomes the building's heater. And Mike Mulligan finds gainful employment, though not by mastering diesel technology. He works contentedly alongside Mary Anne, as a janitor...