I'll just sketch a few points regarding lessons of the two big revolutions, the Neolithic Revolution and the Industrial Revolution, preceding the present Information Revolution. This is not an exhaustive list, nor a comprehensive treatment. The Neolithic Revolution was a consequence of climate change after the end of the most recent ice age. People were forced to switch from hunting and gathering as the only ways of obtaining food to farming not because farming was better, but in order to survive. For the first few centuries their quality of life went down. The switch to a productive economy led after a couple of thousand years to social stratification and a division of society into rich and poor. The Industrial Revolution also initially reduced the quality of life of large parts of the population for many years. The Industrial Revolution boosted consumerism. Another of the consequences of the Industrial Revolution was environmental pollution. Mitigating some of it took many decades and mitigating other parts of it is insufficient, most acutely releasing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, but also pollution with plastics etc. #IndustrialRevolution #InformationRevolution #NeolithicRevolution @circfruit@fosstodon.org