Discovery of nitrogen-fixing corn variety could reduce need for added fertilizer

Re:Discovery of nitrogen-fixing corn variety could reduce ne... by safgasCVS on Thursday August 09, 2018 @10:02AM (#17724238)

I loved Smil's talk so much I ended up buying his last 5 books right after and I'm busy with Energy and Civilisation right now (Lesson being I should not be allowed access to the Kindle Store after I've had 3 glasses of wine)

But yeah I agree with you there- at the time no one (maybe apart from Edison) knew how big an impact they would have.

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Re:Discovery of nitrogen-fixing corn variety could reduce ne... by dredmorbius on Thursday August 09, 2018 @11:22AM (#17724938)

Daniel Yergin's The Prize gets futher into the development of the oil industry, and some of what spawned from it (industry, monopoly, antitrust, war, cartels, commodity regulation, policy (foreign, domestic, military, ...), monetary, and more.

Manfred Weissenbacher's Sources of Power is a difficult-to-find and somewhat uneven book, but builds largely on Smil's premise (from his earlier Energy and World History) to include political and social consequences.

I've been finding institutional and media consequences and dynamics also of interest. Some reading of interest:

https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/7k7l4m/media_a...

More recently: Paul Baran and Norbert Wiener.

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