Material world
by Peter Menzel, Charles C. Mann, Paul M. Kennedy · first published 1994
7mentions
2recommended by
6HN commenters
2012–2024first – last mentioned
33% recommend50% neutral17% critical
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Highly recommend this if you've not heard of it yet, goes into detail about lithium and some other vital raw materials : https://www.amazon.co.uk/Material-World-Substantial-Story-Fu... "Sand, salt, iron, copper, oil and lithium. They built our world, and they will transform our future."
on “Thailand discovers nearly 15M tonnes of lithium” ↗Material World: The Six Raw Materials That Shape Modern Civilization I guessed about four but i was completely blown away by some of the details. Absolutely fascinating.
on “Ask HN: Best non-fiction book you read in 2024?” ↗…etc. that intentionally juxtapose pictures of a virtuous, thin, happy minimalist with a unhappy, overweight person and their tons of possessions. e.g. the front cover of this https://www.amazon.com/Material-World-Global-Family-Portrait... seems almost designed to make us recoil from the "wasteful" American family. The problem I have with this stance is two-fold: (1) there is no inherent reason why it's wasteful…
on “The Few Things I Own” ↗I'm strongly reminded of Peter Menzel's 1994 book "Material World: A Global Family Portrait". http://www.amazon.com/dp/0871564378
on “Chinese families' worldly goods in Huang Qinqjun's pictures” ↗…biomass the limiting element is phosphorous --- what is the limiting material for our modern lifestyle? There's at least one recent book which looks at this: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/125937631-material-world Who is going to determine how resources are divided/allocated? Using what mechanism? My grandfather lived in a time when commercial hunting was outlawed (and multiple species were made extinct before…
on “Stephen Fry – AI: A Means to an End or a Means to Our End?” ↗…such, but it really needs more adoption, and an implementation which doesn't depend on batteries which added a fifth item to the resources humans plunder: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/112974899-material-world (the newcomer is lithium, the others were sand, salt, copper, and oil) We keep crossing tipping points which no one talks about much: https://what-if.xkcd.com/33/ and folks have been writing science…
on “Manna – Two Views of Humanity's Future (2003)” ↗Reminds me of the book Material World by Peter Menzel
on “Photographer documents all items that she owns” ↗