9.1 - Advances in Technology and Exchange

Communication Technologies

• Radio: Guglielmo Marconi sent the first radio signal across the Atlantic in 1901. By the 1920s and 1930s, radio broadcasts carried news, music, and speeches straight into homes, so leaders like Franklin Roosevelt and Adolf Hitler could reach millions of people at once.

• Pre-Internet: TV and radio ads promoted long-distance phone calls.

• Mobile Technology: By the 1990s, cellphones allowed global communication.

• Cell Phones in Poorer Countries: In much of Africa and South Asia, people skipped landlines and went straight to cell phones. In Kenya, M-Pesa (2007) let people send and receive money by text message, even without a bank account.

• Internet: Grew out of ARPANET, a US military research network started in 1969. Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web (proposed in 1989, public in 1991), and by the late 1990s email and websites were spreading worldwide. Smartphones like the iPhone (2007) put the internet in people's pockets.

• Social Media: Platforms like Twitter and Facebook revolutionized information sharing.

• Impact: Videos of police actions sparked inquiries and outrage; social media fueled the Arab Spring protests in North Africa and the Middle East.

• Shrinking Distance: News and messages that once took days or weeks now arrived instantly. Companies could run offices and factories on different continents (for example, US companies using call centers in India), and migrants could stay in daily contact with family back home.

Transportation Advancements

• Air Travel: Jet airliners (from the 1950s) and jumbo jets like the Boeing 747 (1970) made long trips faster and cheaper. In 2019, before the COVID-19 pandemic, airlines carried about 4.5 billion passengers, more than 12 million a day.

• Cargo Planes: Facilitate around-the-clock commercial shipments.

• Shipping Containers: In 1956, American trucking businessman Malcom McLean began shipping goods in standard steel boxes that cranes can move straight from ships to trains and trucks without unpacking. Containers cut loading time and shipping costs so much that making goods on one continent and selling them on another became cheap.

• Container Ships: Giant container ships carry thousands of containers around the world, and some are too large for the Panama Canal.

The Green Revolution

• New Varieties: Developed higher-yield, pest-resistant grains through crossbreeding and genetic engineering.

• Farming Techniques: Increased use of irrigation, fertilizers, and pesticides; mechanized equipment reduced farm labor jobs.

• Origins: American scientist Norman Borlaug bred high-yield, disease-resistant dwarf wheat in Mexico in the 1940s and 1950s. In the mid-1960s, it spread to India and Pakistan, which were facing food shortages, along with new "miracle rice" (IR8, 1966) from a research institute in the Philippines. Borlaug won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970.

• Results: India's wheat harvest more than doubled in less than a decade, and India became largely self-sufficient in grain by the 1970s. Worldwide, food production grew faster than population, which helped feed a population that doubled from about 3 billion (1960) to 6 billion (1999).

• Commercial Agriculture: Large farms run like businesses (agribusiness) grew single cash crops for world markets using machines, chemical fertilizers, and pesticides.

• Genetically Modified (GM) Crops: Starting in the mid-1990s, scientists changed crops' genes directly, creating corn, soybeans, and cotton that resist insects or weed killers. GM crops spread quickly in the US, Brazil, Argentina, and India (cotton), while much of Europe restricted them.

• Economic Inequality: Small farmers often couldn't afford new technologies and were forced to sell their land.

• Environmental Damage: Heavy chemical use harmed soil and ecosystems.

• Genetic Engineering Concerns: Potential decline in pollinating insects and loss of old seed varieties.

Energy Technologies

• Early 20th Century: Coal, petroleum, and natural gas became dominant energy sources.

• Petroleum: Oil fueled the internal combustion engines in cars, trucks, tractors, ships, and planes. Oil and natural gas also became raw materials for plastics, synthetic fabrics like nylon and polyester, and chemical fertilizers. Cheap oil let farms and factories mechanize, which raised productivity and flooded markets with material goods.

• Dependence on Oil: Oil-rich regions like the Middle East gained wealth and power. In 1973, Arab oil producers cut shipments to the US and other supporters of Israel during the Yom Kippur War, and oil prices roughly quadrupled, showing how much industrial economies depended on oil.

• Environmental Impact: Contributed to air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions.

• Nuclear Power: Clean energy but with risks of accidents and hazardous waste.

• Nuclear Expansion: The first nuclear power plants opened in the 1950s in the Soviet Union, Britain, and the US. France built so many that nuclear power makes about two thirds of its electricity. Accidents at Chernobyl (Soviet Union, 1986) and Fukushima (Japan, 2011, after an earthquake and tsunami) made many countries cautious, and Germany closed its last nuclear plants in 2023.

• Development: Wind and solar power grew quickly in the 2010s and 2020s, but as of the early 2020s they still made only a small share of the world's total energy. Counting hydropower too, renewables made about 30% of the world's electricity in 2023.

• Challenges: Technologies continue to evolve to reduce carbon emissions and minimize nuclear power hazards.

Medical Innovations

• Penicillin: Discovered in 1928, became the first antibiotic, revolutionizing the treatment of bacterial infections.

• Mass Production: Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin, but it was mass-produced only during World War II, when it saved many wounded soldiers. After the war, antibiotics made once-deadly infections like pneumonia, infected wounds, and tuberculosis curable.

• Antibiotic Resistance: Overuse led to the evolution of resistant strains, posing a threat of renewed epidemics.

• Birth Control Pill: Developed in the early 1950s, approved in 1960, led to declining fertility rates and reshaped gender roles.

• Control Over Fertility: The pill, and later methods like modern IUDs, let women decide when and whether to have children. More women stayed in school longer and entered paid work.

• Falling Birth Rates: The average number of children per woman worldwide fell from about 5 in the 1960s to about 2.3 by the early 2020s. In Japan, South Korea, and much of Europe, it dropped below 2.1 (the level needed to keep a population stable), so their populations began aging and, in some cases, shrinking.

• Government Policies: Some governments pushed birth control to slow population growth. China's one-child policy (1980 to 2015) limited most urban couples to one child, and India ran mass family planning campaigns, including forced sterilizations during the 1975 to 1977 Emergency.

• Global Impact: By 2021, about 870 million women worldwide used a modern method of birth control (UN estimate).

• Development and Distribution: Widespread vaccination efforts began after 1900, significantly reducing diseases like polio, measles, and smallpox.

• Smallpox: A worldwide WHO vaccination campaign (from 1967) wiped out smallpox. The last natural case was in Somalia in 1977, and WHO declared it eradicated in 1980, the only human disease ever eradicated.

• Impact: Vaccines prevent millions of deaths annually; better coverage could save even more lives.

• Longer Lives: Vaccines, antibiotics, clean water, and better nutrition raised average life expectancy worldwide from about 32 years in 1900 to over 70 by 2019.