There's a good podcast on the Suez and Panama canal: https://omny.fm/shows/cautionary-tales-with-tim-harford/the-...

Absolutely. Years ago I found this book on the topic really eye-opening:

- https://www.amazon.co.uk/Technological-Revolutions-Financial...

The process of _actually_ benefitting from technological improvements is not a straight line, and often requires some external intervention.

e.g. it’s interesting to note that the rising power of specific groups of workers as a result of industrialisation + unionisation then arguably led to things like the 5-day week and the 8-hour day.

I think if (if!) there’s a positive version of what comes from all this, it’s that the same dynamic might emerge. There’s already lots more WFH of course, and some experiments with 4-day weeks. But a lot of resistance too.

My understanding is that the 40 hour work week (and similar) was talked about for centuries by workers groups but only became a thing once governments during WWI found that longer days didn't necessarily increase output proportionally.

For a 4 day week to really happen st scale, I'd expect we similarly need the government to decide to roll it out rather than workers groups pushing it from the bottom up.

> My understanding is that the 40 hour work week (and similar) was talked about for […]

See perhaps:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eight-hour_day_movement

Generally it only really started being talked about when "workers" became a thing, specifically with the Industrial Revolution. Before that a good portion of work was either agricultural or domestic, so talk of 'shifts' didn't really make much sense.

Oh sure, a standard shift doesn't make much sense unless you're an employee. My point was specifically about the 40 hour standard we use now though. We didn't get a 40-hour week because workers demanded it, we got it because wartime governments decided that was the "right" balance of labor and output.

> https://www.amazon.co.uk/Technological-Revolutions-Financial...

Yes, that is the first link of my/GP post.

Importantly, however, canals did end up changing the world.

Most new tech is like that - a period of mania, followed by a long tail of actual adoption where the world quietly changes