Ascent of GIM, the Global Intelligent Machine

“The book presents an ambitious, clearly written, and well-organized history of technology from before the emergence of Homo sapiens until the development of the Internet of Things in the twenty-first century. … The concept of GIM is the book’s most important contribution to the big history of technology. … Koetsier’s The Ascent of GIM is a useful contribution to the growing literature on the big history of technology.” (Dustin Abnet, Isis, Vol. 113 (4), December, 2022)

• Preface.- 1 Introduction.- The Global Intelligent Machine.- Cultural evolution.- Production technology and information technology.- 2 The Rise of Homo Sapiens.- Animals using production tools.- Monkeys and apes using production tools.- Information tools in the animal world: clues, signs and signals.- Communicating honey bees.- Communication among monkeys and apes.- From the hairpin ancestor to Homo sapiens.- Olduwan technology.- The adze makers of Langda.- Language as an information tool.- The control of fire.- The Stone Age Revolution.- Information tools.- Whistle languages.- Talking drums.- The Ishango bone.- Orientation in space, maps in the Pacific.- 3 Tools in the Early Agricultural Empires.- Economic surplus.- Agriculture.- The wheel.- Monumental architecture.- Complete writing.- Towards the alphabet.- Mathematics.- Sundials and water clocks.- 4 The Axial Age and the Birth of Western Science.- The Axial Age.- The rise of abstract symbolic thought in China and India.- Oral versus written thought.- Aristotle’s Logic, a New Information Tool.- Knowledge-how versus knowledge-that.- Deductive science.- The birth of the theory of machines.- The wedge and the pulleys.- Archimedes.- The invention of the screw.- Heron’s Mechanics.- Combinations of simple machines.- Difficulties in understanding the wedge and the inclined plane.- 5 Machines in Classical Antiquity.- The invention of artillery.- Production machines in Vitruvius’ Ten Books on Architecture.- The Phaistos disc.- The abacus.- Water clocks and sundials.- The Armillary Sphere.- The anaphoric clock.- The astrolabe.- The mystery of the Antikythera mechanism.- The front dial.- The upper back dial.- The pin and slot mechanism.- The hodometer.- Automata.- 6 The Middle Ages.- Marco Polo.- Textile machines.- Military technology.- Metal technology.- Movable type printing.- The hodometer and Su Sung’s clock.- Automata.- Chinese influence in the West.- The Golden Age of Islamic Science.- Islamic culture, the information machines of the three Banu Musa.- Al-Jazari’s production machines.- Al-Muradi.- The rise of the West.- Jordanus.- The Vision of Ramon Llull.- The invention of the printing press.- Llull’s influence.- A new information machine: the mechanical clock.- 7 The Renaissance and the Scientific Revolution.- The impact of the printing press.- Da Vinci and the others.- Parachute, tank and machine gun.- Da Vinci as an engineer.- Da Vinci’s fame.- Theaters of machines.- Exterior ballistics.- Del Monte and simple machines.- Galilei and simple machines.- The Archimedean screw pump.- Astronomy.- Galilei’s Discorsi.- A remarkable Flemish engineer: Simon Stevin.- There is more.- The dream of a mathesis universalis.- Calculators.- Scepticism.- 8 The First Wave of Industrial Revolution: Cotton Textiles and Pig Iron.- The background.- The role of the Scientific Revolution.- A macroeconomic view of the Industrial Revolution.- The Malthusian trap.- The escape.- One or more Industrial Revolutions?.- Innovation and long waves.- The Control Revolution.- Textile industry.- Steam engines.- Safety valve and governor.- Robert Stirling.- Printing.- A changing world.- The clockmakers and the art of the transformation of motion.- Watt’s parallelogram.- Babbage’s machines.- 9 The Second Wave of Industrial Revolution: Railroads and Steel.- Globalization.- The Railroads.- Stephenson’s valve gear.- Corliss Engines.- Problems of control.- Organizational charts: the birth of a new information tool.- Office technology.- Kinematics and the birth of scientific technology.- The energetic approach.- Sadi Carnot and the Carnot machine.- Thermodynamics is born.- The application of thermodynamics to the design of actual machines.- 10 More Scientific Technology.- Electrical engineering.- Ballistics.- Iron in architecture.- Scientific management.- Control rooms.- Sales.- Calculators.- Statistical machines.- Scientific calculators.- Kelvin’s tide predictors.- Differential analyzers.- 11 Electronic Brains.- The fourth wave and the first programmable computers.- Turing machines: What can be computed in principle?.- Code breaking.- The mechanization of the mind.- Early computers in the USA.- Real Time Computing.- Software.- The computer becomes personal.- The fifth wave and the World Wide Web.- Smartphones and more.- 12 Towards the Global Intelligent Machine.- Early hybrid machines.- Karel Čapek.- An early parallel robot.- Analogue computer-controlled machines.- From analogue to numerical control.- Cybernetics.- An early serial robot.- Robotics.- The Stewart platform.- Field and service robots.- Artificial intelligence.- The Internet of Things.- The Global Intelligent Machine.- On the way to GIM.- GIM is growing fast.- Industry 4.0.- 13 Epilogue.- Hindsight.- A Brave New World?.- The battleground.- Cybercrime.- Unemployment.- Security, Privacy and fake news.- 14 Literature.- Index.