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Comment by leejoramo | Hacker News Reader

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leejoramo·

> [the information] revolution will dwarf the petrochemical revolution.

I remember people thinking this was a crazy idea, but his forecast was largely correct:

http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?source=frontpage-immediat...

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The petrochemical revolution is more than the market cap of an oil company. The petrochemical revolution guides the way we've built our cities for the past 100+ years, how we ship our goods and how we travel the world. The entire transport system - cars, trucks, ships, planes - almost all petrochemical. And the negative side too. Vast fields of tarmac (petrochemical) parking lots (petrochemical) for strip malls. Urban sprawl. Well over a million people killed on roads every year. Millions more affected by chemical byproducts. Acid rain. Global warming.

Computers are only getting started. They'll get there eventually though; computers are to the brain what engines are to the body.

Not only those aspects of the petrochemical revolution, it's also the total pervasiveness of plastic products in our lives.

> The petrochemical revolution guides the way we've

conducted foreign policy should have received top billing. Unless you were intentionally excluding items not in both sets.

Petrochemicals also enabled mechanized warfare. That's a bigger impact on killing power than any squabbles in the Middle East. I expect deaths in Levantine squabbles are also dwarfed by road accidents.

And it still has a ways to go.

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