Today we're reading chapter 12, "FALC: A New Beginning," and it begins by immediately addressing the profound and complicated relationship between technology and politics, asserting, "Technology is neither good nor bad; nor is it neutral".
Rather, the context from which technology is conceived, created, and utilized—specifically the political, ethical, and social contexts—determines its impact and benefit. While technology may not determine history, it certainly possesses the capacity to disrupt and shape it, making "the history of technology... the most relevant".
The chapter posits that the Third Disruption, characterized by innovations like AI, renewable energy, and gene editing, exhibits both modern and historical tendencies, having emerged alongside new concepts regarding selfhood, nature, and production models. T
o fully grasp the present moment, from the rise of synthetic meat to advancements in artificial intelligence, requires examining underlying social movements (such as green activism demanding animal welfare and climate action) just as much as observing the internal dynamics of capitalism that drive extreme supply and automation.
This chapter explores why certain revolutionary ideas remain historically inert until the necessary technology renders them commonplace, much as the widespread availability of the printed word made the concepts central to the Reformation inevitable, long after their initial conception.
The Third Disruption is defined by the fact that core innovations—including photovoltaic cells, lithium batteries, and the silicon transistor, which have seen "continuous progress since the 1950s"—are now bringing extreme supply to information, labor, and resources.
This unprecedented abundance fundamentally challenges two central premises of capitalism: the notion that scarcity will always exist, and the assumption that goods cannot be produced if their marginal cost approaches zero.
Consequently, the direction of this overwhelming technological and economic transformation—whether it results in greater liberation or widespread collapse—will be determined by politics, specifically the "binding decisions on all of us that we collectively choose to make".