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Material World: The Six Raw Materials That Shape Modern Civilization
Sand, salt, iron, copper, oil, and lithium. These fundamental materials have created empires, razed civilizations, and fed our ingenuity and greed for thousands of years. Without them, our modern world would not exist, and the battle to control them will determine our future.
The fiber-optic cables that weave the World Wide Web, the copper veins of our electric grids, the silicon chips and lithium batteries that power our phones and though it can feel like we now live in a weightless world of information—what Ed Conway calls “the ethereal world”—our twenty-first-century lives are still very much rooted in the material.
In fact, we dug more stuff out of the earth in 2017 than in all of human history before 1950. For every ton of fossil fuels, we extract six tons of other materials, from sand to stone to wood to metal. And in Material World, Conway embarks on an epic journey across continents, cultures, and epochs to reveal the underpinnings of modern life on Earth—traveling from the sweltering depths of the deepest mine in Europe to spotless silicon chip factories in Taiwan to the eerie green pools where lithium originates.
Material World is a celebration of the humans and the human networks, the miraculous processes and the little-known companies, that combine to turn raw materials into things of wonder. This is the story of human civilization from an entirely new the ground up.
The fiber-optic cables that weave the World Wide Web, the copper veins of our electric grids, the silicon chips and lithium batteries that power our phones and though it can feel like we now live in a weightless world of information—what Ed Conway calls “the ethereal world”—our twenty-first-century lives are still very much rooted in the material.
In fact, we dug more stuff out of the earth in 2017 than in all of human history before 1950. For every ton of fossil fuels, we extract six tons of other materials, from sand to stone to wood to metal. And in Material World, Conway embarks on an epic journey across continents, cultures, and epochs to reveal the underpinnings of modern life on Earth—traveling from the sweltering depths of the deepest mine in Europe to spotless silicon chip factories in Taiwan to the eerie green pools where lithium originates.
Material World is a celebration of the humans and the human networks, the miraculous processes and the little-known companies, that combine to turn raw materials into things of wonder. This is the story of human civilization from an entirely new the ground up.
512 pages, Hardcover
First published June 15, 2023
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May 13, 2024
”Създадохме икономическа система, която е толкова сложна и съвършена, че ни позволи да забравим за материалите, от които е построена.”
“Това, че не обръщаме особено внимание на Материалния свят, е смисълът. Защо да го правим, когато нещо просто…работи?”
Това е книга за взаимовръзките, трансформациите и взаимозависимостите.
В ерата на смартфоните, интернет и изкуствения интелект недигитализираната част от живота често започва да изглежда все по-нереална и смътна. А именно тя е фундаментът, който превръща доволния или най-малкото обезпечен обитател на 21-ви век в такъв. Този фундамент далеч не е мухлясал паметник на полузабравени събития, а царство, където науката достига нива на сложност, които почти я приравняват на магия.
Магията се кове от няколко прости съставки, които са толкова евтини и лесни за намиране, че са на практика невидими:
☑️ Пясък⏳ - без който нямаше да имаме стъкло, оптика и фиброоптични кабели за пренос на данни, както и силициевите полупроводници;
☑️ Сол🧂- без която нямаше да има вековната консервация на храни преди хладилника, както и днешната фармация и санитарен сектор. Солта е буквално във всичко;
☑️ Желязо⚙️- и неговата производна, стоманата, налична във всеки уред, машина, робот;
☑️ Мед💡- без която нямаше да го има приетото за даденост електричество. Нито безобразното унищожение на природата в огромни мащаби;
☑️ Петрол⛽️ - тук няма смисъл да се посочва каквото и да е, достатъчни са двигателят с вътрешно горене и пластмаси с почти извънземни качества;
☑️ Литий📱 - всяка добра батерия го ползва. А бъдещето, изглежда, принадлежи на батериите…
Ед Конуей буквално пътешества из толкова различни и привидно нямащи нищо общо светове, че е зашеметяващо. От доменни пещи като в ада, през фабрика за полупроводници сякаш от ненаписан все още научнофантастичен роман, през солна мина под морето, в която камионите са почти с обем на космическа совалка и пътуват един час до повърхността, до пустини със странни геоложки феномени сякаш от зората на земната история.
Междувременно се редуват войни за ресурси и технологични революции, довели до възход и падение на империи. Пробиви в науката, в които сякаш няма логика и не са очаквани, но носят огромни ползи,…докато след половин или няколко века не станат ясни и вредите, а цикълът със следващия “вълшебен” материал се завърти на нови обороти. Прелитат се огромни и отдалечени граници на различни континенти.
Книгата е епична, увлекателна, детайлно проучена и елегантно поднесена, образователна и предупреждаваща. И най-важното - чете се в ритъма на онова неусетно четене, което може да е само бавно и напоително, защото то самото поглъща огромно читателско гориво, което накрая се трансформира почти по магия в полезен продукт.
4,5⭐️
“Това, че не обръщаме особено внимание на Материалния свят, е смисълът. Защо да го правим, когато нещо просто…работи?”
Това е книга за взаимовръзките, трансформациите и взаимозависимостите.
В ерата на смартфоните, интернет и изкуствения интелект недигитализираната част от живота често започва да изглежда все по-нереална и смътна. А именно тя е фундаментът, който превръща доволния или най-малкото обезпечен обитател на 21-ви век в такъв. Този фундамент далеч не е мухлясал паметник на полузабравени събития, а царство, където науката достига нива на сложност, които почти я приравняват на магия.
Магията се кове от няколко прости съставки, които са толкова евтини и лесни за намиране, че са на практика невидими:
☑️ Пясък⏳ - без който нямаше да имаме стъкло, оптика и фиброоптични кабели за пренос на данни, както и силициевите полупроводници;
☑️ Сол🧂- без която нямаше да има вековната консервация на храни преди хладилника, както и днешната фармация и санитарен сектор. Солта е буквално във всичко;
☑️ Желязо⚙️- и неговата производна, стоманата, налична във всеки уред, машина, робот;
☑️ Мед💡- без която нямаше да го има приетото за даденост електричество. Нито безобразното унищожение на природата в огромни мащаби;
☑️ Петрол⛽️ - тук няма смисъл да се посочва каквото и да е, достатъчни са двигателят с вътрешно горене и пластмаси с почти извънземни качества;
☑️ Литий📱 - всяка добра батерия го ползва. А бъдещето, изглежда, принадлежи на батериите…
Ед Конуей буквално пътешества из толкова различни и привидно нямащи нищо общо светове, че е зашеметяващо. От доменни пещи като в ада, през фабрика за полупроводници сякаш от ненаписан все още научнофантастичен роман, през солна мина под морето, в която камионите са почти с обем на космическа совалка и пътуват един час до повърхността, до пустини със странни геоложки феномени сякаш от зората на земната история.
Междувременно се редуват войни за ресурси и технологични революции, довели до възход и падение на империи. Пробиви в науката, в които сякаш няма логика и не са очаквани, но носят огромни ползи,…докато след половин или няколко века не станат ясни и вредите, а цикълът със следващия “вълшебен” материал се завърти на нови обороти. Прелитат се огромни и отдалечени граници на различни континенти.
Книгата е епична, увлекателна, детайлно проучена и елегантно поднесена, образователна и предупреждаваща. И най-важното - чете се в ритъма на онова неусетно четене, което може да е само бавно и напоително, защото то самото поглъща огромно читателско гориво, което накрая се трансформира почти по магия в полезен продукт.
4,5⭐️
March 30, 2024
Well researched and engaging book about the modern materials that run the world and the geopolitics that controls them
This was an absolutely amazing read and I recommend you read it right away. If the subject matter appears dull to you, just pick this up because this is anything but a dull book. Ed Conway is extremely knowledgeable about material science and the politics and history involved in what he believes are the 6 major materials that are the silent and vital infrastructure of our modern world: sand, salt (sodium chloride), iron, copper, oil and lithium. Conway takes you on a journey through the history of these materials and their incredible and often overlooked importance in the global economy and our very way of modern life.
Glass comes from sand and the modern world could not function without glass products. Glass has been used throughout history and instrumental in many technologies including lenses and pharmaceuticals. During WWI, there was such glass shortages for rifle scopes and binoculars that Britain and Germany actually traded with one another and the Germans supplied their own enemies with sniper telescopes. Even though sand is ubiquitous, it is highly variable. Silica, which comes from sand, is a highly sought after material namely for making the nanoscopic silicon wafers used in semiconductors and microchips in all modern computing technology including smart phones. The US will basically stop at nothing at this point to stop China from obtaining silicon to halt their leading tech edge. Biden showed his hand with sweeping restrictions and chip making material to send to China. Sand is also used in cement which is a material with many concoptions that has silently and greatly revolutionized the world’s infrastructure. Sand is so highly valued that some countries actually have brutal sand mafias that control the supply.
Salt has also been used since ancient times, 1,000 years before Stonehenge as an antimicrobial. Salt has always been highly sought after and controlled by the state as in ancient China and France and the control of salt is often associated with autocratic rule. Controlling and taxing salt has been a historical source of much contention between the state and its people. Modernly, salt is used to keep our water clean and also used everywhere in pharmaceuticals. Copper has been around a long time and its need will only increase as the world tries to transition to battery energy.
Oil is needed for basically everything. Conway goes into the politics of oil and talks at length about the largest oil field in the world in Saudi Arabia and its dominance as a petro-state. The fracking revolution in the US, where oil is extracted from deep rock formations, indeed does theoretically create enough oil to create US dependency but it still relies on complex global chains for refinement and the US is still practically depending on Saudi imports. Hence Biden visiting Saudi Arabia and fist-bumping the Saudi autocrats. The thing is, not only are so many plastic products, foods, fertilizers and other essentials dependent on oil products but we must burn fossil fuels or even create a green infrastructure to gradually move away from fossil fuels. Natural gas will be instrumental in this shift as it creates less carbon.
Lithium is the newest material that has the modern world vying to dominate it. Rechargeable batteries need lithium to run, making it highly sought after. Conway visited the richest deposits in the world in Chile and discusses how most lithium is exported to China which produces 7/10 of all batteries in the world. This whole book is a story not about supply chains but supply webs none of which any single person understands. The geopolitics cannot be untangled to the supply webs and bind together the world that has probably helped police deep water navigation (with the US as the arbiter) and promote global cooperation.
The material world appears stable and we take it for granted but we are just one conflict away from supply chains collapsing where the actual mining location of these materials matters substantially. This was such an amazing read and truly eye opening. I highly recommend you pick it up now.
This was an absolutely amazing read and I recommend you read it right away. If the subject matter appears dull to you, just pick this up because this is anything but a dull book. Ed Conway is extremely knowledgeable about material science and the politics and history involved in what he believes are the 6 major materials that are the silent and vital infrastructure of our modern world: sand, salt (sodium chloride), iron, copper, oil and lithium. Conway takes you on a journey through the history of these materials and their incredible and often overlooked importance in the global economy and our very way of modern life.
Glass comes from sand and the modern world could not function without glass products. Glass has been used throughout history and instrumental in many technologies including lenses and pharmaceuticals. During WWI, there was such glass shortages for rifle scopes and binoculars that Britain and Germany actually traded with one another and the Germans supplied their own enemies with sniper telescopes. Even though sand is ubiquitous, it is highly variable. Silica, which comes from sand, is a highly sought after material namely for making the nanoscopic silicon wafers used in semiconductors and microchips in all modern computing technology including smart phones. The US will basically stop at nothing at this point to stop China from obtaining silicon to halt their leading tech edge. Biden showed his hand with sweeping restrictions and chip making material to send to China. Sand is also used in cement which is a material with many concoptions that has silently and greatly revolutionized the world’s infrastructure. Sand is so highly valued that some countries actually have brutal sand mafias that control the supply.
Salt has also been used since ancient times, 1,000 years before Stonehenge as an antimicrobial. Salt has always been highly sought after and controlled by the state as in ancient China and France and the control of salt is often associated with autocratic rule. Controlling and taxing salt has been a historical source of much contention between the state and its people. Modernly, salt is used to keep our water clean and also used everywhere in pharmaceuticals. Copper has been around a long time and its need will only increase as the world tries to transition to battery energy.
Oil is needed for basically everything. Conway goes into the politics of oil and talks at length about the largest oil field in the world in Saudi Arabia and its dominance as a petro-state. The fracking revolution in the US, where oil is extracted from deep rock formations, indeed does theoretically create enough oil to create US dependency but it still relies on complex global chains for refinement and the US is still practically depending on Saudi imports. Hence Biden visiting Saudi Arabia and fist-bumping the Saudi autocrats. The thing is, not only are so many plastic products, foods, fertilizers and other essentials dependent on oil products but we must burn fossil fuels or even create a green infrastructure to gradually move away from fossil fuels. Natural gas will be instrumental in this shift as it creates less carbon.
Lithium is the newest material that has the modern world vying to dominate it. Rechargeable batteries need lithium to run, making it highly sought after. Conway visited the richest deposits in the world in Chile and discusses how most lithium is exported to China which produces 7/10 of all batteries in the world. This whole book is a story not about supply chains but supply webs none of which any single person understands. The geopolitics cannot be untangled to the supply webs and bind together the world that has probably helped police deep water navigation (with the US as the arbiter) and promote global cooperation.
The material world appears stable and we take it for granted but we are just one conflict away from supply chains collapsing where the actual mining location of these materials matters substantially. This was such an amazing read and truly eye opening. I highly recommend you pick it up now.
September 14, 2023
Probably the best book that I have read this year, talks about the importance of six minerals, how we extract them and how desperately countries are dependent on each other for basic raw materials.
December 9, 2023
Ed Conway's Material World is his term for a world most of us no longer inhabit, of which we are not even really conscious, a contrast to our 'ethereal world' of services industries, finance and media:
Perhaps you live there too: it is a rather lovely place, a world of ideas In the ethereal world we sell services and management and administration; we build apps and websites; we transfer money from one column to another; we trade mostly in thoughts and advice, in haircuts and food delivery. If mountains are being torn down on the other side of the planet, it hardly seems especially relevant here in the ethereal world.
When I flew out to Nevada to film that mountain being exploded I was really looking to film a visual metaphor, to turn the physical into something ethereal: a news report that would help people understand an idea like trade flows that bit better. Standing at the edge of the pit there, though, it occurred to me that my perspective had been dangerously shallow. All of a sudden I realised I was staring out from the brink of one world and into another: the Material World.
The Material World is what undergirds our everyday lives. Without this place your beautifully designed smartphone wouldn't switch on, your brand new electric car would have no battery. The Material World will not provide you with a gorgeous home, but it will ensure your home can actually stand up. It will keep you warm, clean, fed and well, however little heed you may pay it.
He tells the story of this world, and the foundations of our modern world, through the story of five key substances (although at times a little more broadly drawn that this migt imply) - sand, salt, iron, copper, oil and lithium. This is a world of both astounding scale and micro-complexity, of both world-defining (and world-damaging) processes and yet low-key even secret:
According to one person who has done business with Sibelco, going to their headquarters was 'a bit like getting into Fort Knox,. There are z5-foot-high fences surrounding the complex, ringed with barbed wire, and there are security cameras and frequent security patrols. 'When contractors from other companies are brought in for repairs [at the plant] they are literally blindfolded and marched into the factory up to the machine they need to fix,' says another insider. 'It's like something out of Willy WonIca.'
Why this cloak-and-dagger behaviour? Why the secrecy? According to Reiner Haus, the silicon analyst: 'If you have a monopoly, why would you want to talk to anyone? There's no need to market your product.'
One of Conway's themes, connected to that secrecy, is the fragility of our systems, as well as their global interconnectedness -this quote relevant to the first:
The one in Runcorn provides about 98 per cent of Britain's chlorine, which is then used to purify its tap water. As we stared at the tank where the chlorine is mixed with the caustic soda to create hypochlorite — the compound that goes into bleach and water purification systems—one worker whispered: 'If this place goes down unexpectedly then within seven days this country is rationing drinking water.' Yet few are even aware of the existence of this forgotten node of the Material World. And that suits them here just fine.
And the other of course, is the huge environmental damage, usually in poorer countries, being done in the support of our western living standards. Fascinatingly Conway explains how many of the processes today we regard as damagingly unsustainable were themselves developed as solutions to earlier such situations - which leaves him on balance more of an optimistic believer in human ingenuity than a support of Malthusian/Limits to Growth type ideas.
For a more novelistic account of Cheshire salt mines see the brilliant Never Was.
Conway is economics and data editor at Sky News, who I have admired for some time for his clear illustration on Twitter (I don't watch TV) of complex facts, mined (pun intended) from detailed data, and this carries over to this book, which he is in many respect the ideal person to write:
One of the most wonderful, and for that matter challenging, things about telling the story of the Material World is that this place doesn't fit neatly into any pre-existing scientific or literary categories. This is a story of geology, but it's also about engineering. It's about history and about economics. It covers material science and chemistry, not to mention physics and biology. It is, in short, a bit of everything, which is the best defence I can offer for why I, a mere journalist, am the one attempting to tie these strands together.
As small negatives, the book is entirely lacking Conway's trademark visual graphs and it definitely suffer a little from that trope of TV, as opposed to radio or print, news - just as no political commentator can seemingly discuss British politics without standing outside no 10 with it shown in the background, every chapter has to have Conway's own journey to the places involved.
And as an inhabitant of the financial services sector of the ethereal world, I'd have liked to have seen a chapter on how interconnected the two are - how much of these processes depend on the flow of finance and investments, and on insurance of the risks involved.
But overall, and impressive read - enjoyable and informative, and not a non-fiction book where the executive summary suffices.
Perhaps you live there too: it is a rather lovely place, a world of ideas In the ethereal world we sell services and management and administration; we build apps and websites; we transfer money from one column to another; we trade mostly in thoughts and advice, in haircuts and food delivery. If mountains are being torn down on the other side of the planet, it hardly seems especially relevant here in the ethereal world.
When I flew out to Nevada to film that mountain being exploded I was really looking to film a visual metaphor, to turn the physical into something ethereal: a news report that would help people understand an idea like trade flows that bit better. Standing at the edge of the pit there, though, it occurred to me that my perspective had been dangerously shallow. All of a sudden I realised I was staring out from the brink of one world and into another: the Material World.
The Material World is what undergirds our everyday lives. Without this place your beautifully designed smartphone wouldn't switch on, your brand new electric car would have no battery. The Material World will not provide you with a gorgeous home, but it will ensure your home can actually stand up. It will keep you warm, clean, fed and well, however little heed you may pay it.
He tells the story of this world, and the foundations of our modern world, through the story of five key substances (although at times a little more broadly drawn that this migt imply) - sand, salt, iron, copper, oil and lithium. This is a world of both astounding scale and micro-complexity, of both world-defining (and world-damaging) processes and yet low-key even secret:
According to one person who has done business with Sibelco, going to their headquarters was 'a bit like getting into Fort Knox,. There are z5-foot-high fences surrounding the complex, ringed with barbed wire, and there are security cameras and frequent security patrols. 'When contractors from other companies are brought in for repairs [at the plant] they are literally blindfolded and marched into the factory up to the machine they need to fix,' says another insider. 'It's like something out of Willy WonIca.'
Why this cloak-and-dagger behaviour? Why the secrecy? According to Reiner Haus, the silicon analyst: 'If you have a monopoly, why would you want to talk to anyone? There's no need to market your product.'
One of Conway's themes, connected to that secrecy, is the fragility of our systems, as well as their global interconnectedness -this quote relevant to the first:
The one in Runcorn provides about 98 per cent of Britain's chlorine, which is then used to purify its tap water. As we stared at the tank where the chlorine is mixed with the caustic soda to create hypochlorite — the compound that goes into bleach and water purification systems—one worker whispered: 'If this place goes down unexpectedly then within seven days this country is rationing drinking water.' Yet few are even aware of the existence of this forgotten node of the Material World. And that suits them here just fine.
And the other of course, is the huge environmental damage, usually in poorer countries, being done in the support of our western living standards. Fascinatingly Conway explains how many of the processes today we regard as damagingly unsustainable were themselves developed as solutions to earlier such situations - which leaves him on balance more of an optimistic believer in human ingenuity than a support of Malthusian/Limits to Growth type ideas.
For a more novelistic account of Cheshire salt mines see the brilliant Never Was.
Conway is economics and data editor at Sky News, who I have admired for some time for his clear illustration on Twitter (I don't watch TV) of complex facts, mined (pun intended) from detailed data, and this carries over to this book, which he is in many respect the ideal person to write:
One of the most wonderful, and for that matter challenging, things about telling the story of the Material World is that this place doesn't fit neatly into any pre-existing scientific or literary categories. This is a story of geology, but it's also about engineering. It's about history and about economics. It covers material science and chemistry, not to mention physics and biology. It is, in short, a bit of everything, which is the best defence I can offer for why I, a mere journalist, am the one attempting to tie these strands together.
As small negatives, the book is entirely lacking Conway's trademark visual graphs and it definitely suffer a little from that trope of TV, as opposed to radio or print, news - just as no political commentator can seemingly discuss British politics without standing outside no 10 with it shown in the background, every chapter has to have Conway's own journey to the places involved.
And as an inhabitant of the financial services sector of the ethereal world, I'd have liked to have seen a chapter on how interconnected the two are - how much of these processes depend on the flow of finance and investments, and on insurance of the risks involved.
But overall, and impressive read - enjoyable and informative, and not a non-fiction book where the executive summary suffices.
March 3, 2024
świetne kompendium wiedzy o sześciu surowcach, bez których nie wyobrażamy sobie już życia. napisane bardzo przystępnym językiem, z mnóstwem przykładów (również polskich!) i opisów działania – zrozumiałych nawet dla osób nieznających się za bardzo na chemii i fizyce. bardzo podobał mi się aspekt historyczny, dzięki któremu mogłam zrozumieć jeszcze więcej. bardzo przydatne zakończenie, będące nie tylko podsumowaniem, ale i wizją przyszłości bez lub z tymi surowcami. mój poziom wiedzy na ten temat znacząco wzrósł. szczeliny nigdy nie zawodzą!
October 9, 2023
Material World offers a good overview of the topic of modern commodities, their interlinkedness, and critical aspects of their processes. While nowhere near as comprehensive as it could have been, the writing is still easy to read and understand, though there a few questions on last-mile accuracy. The big issue is that not only is the writing itself a bit surface level, the exploration itself can end up being so as well. The deep dives into particular examples offer tantalising glimpses of important areas that could have been explored further to round the book out, but the choice of 6 commodities makes it a bit fast paced for the subject. A very useful entry into the specifics commodities and gives an excellent guide into pointed questions for further exploration.
August 16, 2023
Fascinating, lively, vitally important and, furthermore, hopeful. Everyone should read it - especially politicians and environmental campaigners. And Ed Conway should be knighted for writing it.
July 17, 2023
An enjoyable, informative, and, for those of us who live primarily in the ‘ethereal’ world, possibly an important book. It spells out just how totally (and increasingly) dependent we are on all the stuff we dig or suck out of the ground. The writer shares his wonder at the human ingenuity involved in the extraction and processing of minerals, and his concerns about the associated environmental costs. Lots of history, lots of industrial detail and lots of food for thought.
He concentrates on six materials: sand (i.e. glass, silicon, concrete etc), salt, iron, oil, copper and lithium. Fascinating stuff, and we are told that if we ever have any hope of weaning ourselves off fossil fuels, our need for copper and lithium, especially lithium, will go up and up for a good while. Batteries will be crucial and that means lithium. Nothing comes close.
Everything has an environmental price tag, for example, he tells us just how much concrete, steel, fibreglass, copper and fossil fuels go into constructing wind turbines, especially those off-shore.
He also tells us about the global interdependence related to extraction, processing, reprocessing and manufacturing from all this stuff, and the fragility and interconnectedness of supply lines. This is a good companion piece to the more geo-political books by Tim Marshall.
Sobering it may be, but this is not a pessimistic book, and he points to the hope contained in the fact that the future of mineral extraction will primarily be for making things, not for burning. But neither does he gloss over the social, ecological, economic and political challenges that confront us now and lie ahead. We live on a finite planet so untrammelled mineral exploitation is not an option. He also posits that to get to a renewable energy powered world, and to minimise the climate crisis, this generation, and the next, will need to exercise restraint which isn’t something we are normally very good at.
Recommended.
He concentrates on six materials: sand (i.e. glass, silicon, concrete etc), salt, iron, oil, copper and lithium. Fascinating stuff, and we are told that if we ever have any hope of weaning ourselves off fossil fuels, our need for copper and lithium, especially lithium, will go up and up for a good while. Batteries will be crucial and that means lithium. Nothing comes close.
Everything has an environmental price tag, for example, he tells us just how much concrete, steel, fibreglass, copper and fossil fuels go into constructing wind turbines, especially those off-shore.
He also tells us about the global interdependence related to extraction, processing, reprocessing and manufacturing from all this stuff, and the fragility and interconnectedness of supply lines. This is a good companion piece to the more geo-political books by Tim Marshall.
Sobering it may be, but this is not a pessimistic book, and he points to the hope contained in the fact that the future of mineral extraction will primarily be for making things, not for burning. But neither does he gloss over the social, ecological, economic and political challenges that confront us now and lie ahead. We live on a finite planet so untrammelled mineral exploitation is not an option. He also posits that to get to a renewable energy powered world, and to minimise the climate crisis, this generation, and the next, will need to exercise restraint which isn’t something we are normally very good at.
Recommended.
April 12, 2024
This is an extremely important book on the materials we can’t do without. They aren’t ones most of us think daily about, but they are essential.
Sand - for cement, buildings and roads. Sand is also used for making glass. Sand is not just sand.
Iron - for a ton of things: building, cars, vessels, rockets
Copper - for the green transition and electricity.
Salt - a necessary ingredient
Oil - for transportation, food production, clothes, and various materials
Lithium - for the batteries in our gadgets and cars, also essential for the next energy transition
The problem with these materials is that extracting them is extremely damaging to the environment. Hard decisions will have to be made, such as deep sea mining. Or using too much water or blowing up sacred sites.
We do not live in a service economy. We live in a world where we exploit natural resources and this will not change. I wanted to start the book again when I was done.
Sand - for cement, buildings and roads. Sand is also used for making glass. Sand is not just sand.
Iron - for a ton of things: building, cars, vessels, rockets
Copper - for the green transition and electricity.
Salt - a necessary ingredient
Oil - for transportation, food production, clothes, and various materials
Lithium - for the batteries in our gadgets and cars, also essential for the next energy transition
The problem with these materials is that extracting them is extremely damaging to the environment. Hard decisions will have to be made, such as deep sea mining. Or using too much water or blowing up sacred sites.
We do not live in a service economy. We live in a world where we exploit natural resources and this will not change. I wanted to start the book again when I was done.
May 12, 2024
Pierwszy rozdział tej książki, o piasku, wgniótł mnie niemal w fotel. Tyle faktów, dla mnie wcześniej nieznanych, rozsadziło mi mózg niemalże.
Potem już chyba lekko się uodporniłam na ilość faktów, ale ta książka na każdej stronie zadziwia.
Uświadomiła mi jak bardzo skomplikowany jest nasz świat, jak wiele zależy od podstawowych surowców, a jak niewiele osób wie jak je pozyskać i przetworzyć.
Autor kończy książkę ważną uwagą, że przejście na bardziej zrównoważoną gospodarkę i energię będzie wymagało krótkoterminowego wzrostu wydobycia paliw kopalnych i nieodnawialnych surowców. Ale powinno w długim okresie pomoc Ziemi.
Po raz pierwszy od czasów studenckich zakreślałam w książce ciekawostki, a było ich całe mnóstwo. Bardzo się cieszę, że kupiłam tę książkę i będę mogła do niej wracać.
Bardzo wam polecam, pokazuje szalenie ciekawe miejsca na ziemi!
Potem już chyba lekko się uodporniłam na ilość faktów, ale ta książka na każdej stronie zadziwia.
Uświadomiła mi jak bardzo skomplikowany jest nasz świat, jak wiele zależy od podstawowych surowców, a jak niewiele osób wie jak je pozyskać i przetworzyć.
Autor kończy książkę ważną uwagą, że przejście na bardziej zrównoważoną gospodarkę i energię będzie wymagało krótkoterminowego wzrostu wydobycia paliw kopalnych i nieodnawialnych surowców. Ale powinno w długim okresie pomoc Ziemi.
Po raz pierwszy od czasów studenckich zakreślałam w książce ciekawostki, a było ich całe mnóstwo. Bardzo się cieszę, że kupiłam tę książkę i będę mogła do niej wracać.
Bardzo wam polecam, pokazuje szalenie ciekawe miejsca na ziemi!
February 9, 2024
The book sounded promising. But the author meanders all over the place, loves the sound of his own voice, and takes forever to say anything meaningful. Pretentious twaddle. I'm setting this aside for now.
The book opens with the author visiting a big, low-grade Nevada gold mine. My old livelihood, and I've also visited that mine. He feels vaguely guilty that his gold wedding band required mining so much rock, treated with cyanide: after all, who really needs gold? Cyanide = POISON! He riffs off on a tangent on mercury pollution. Sacred land for the Indians. And on and on and on. Good grief.
Closing out as DNF. I skimmed ahead on other interesting topics. Hopeless. Not for me! 2 stars is likely over-generous.
The book opens with the author visiting a big, low-grade Nevada gold mine. My old livelihood, and I've also visited that mine. He feels vaguely guilty that his gold wedding band required mining so much rock, treated with cyanide: after all, who really needs gold? Cyanide = POISON! He riffs off on a tangent on mercury pollution. Sacred land for the Indians. And on and on and on. Good grief.
Closing out as DNF. I skimmed ahead on other interesting topics. Hopeless. Not for me! 2 stars is likely over-generous.
March 25, 2024
Otwiera oczy.
July 31, 2024
‘Material World: the Six Raw Materials that Shape Modern Civilization’ by Ed Conway is a must read! I ask, no demand! that GR readers add this book to their TBR lists! While a case can be made it is a book of infodumps, Conway’s writing makes the science and history about the science of making things extremely interesting, not dull. There is a lot of non-fiction information to digest in this book, but it is important. The high-tech products which are required for work by farmers, manufacturers, construction workers, white- and blue-collar workers, and which are necessary in most homes, would not exist but for the scientific discoveries of how useful the six materials of sand, salt, iron, copper, oil and lithium turned out to be. These six materials are basic building blocks of almost every single item that is representative of civilization, behind every step of technological progress all of us are familiar with, in almost every product we all casually use without thought every day.
Unfortunately, every one of these basic materials in being transformed into cement, iron, steel, transistors, plastics, gasoline, pharmaceutical drugs, jewelry, cell phones, pencils, computers, electricity, fibre optic cables, glass, silicon chips, toilet paper, electric cars, batteries, trains, airplanes, trucks, headphones, televisions, sound bars, fertilizers, wood preservation, space stations, wind turbines, solar panels, wires, sewer pipes, test tubes, microscopes, MRI machines, scalpels, packaging, every kitchen utensil, pots and pans and kitchen sinks, etc etc etc etc etc etc, on and on, pumps CO2 into the atmosphere when manufactured using these six basic materials which are pulled out of the Earth and transformed by heat, chemicals and mixing and matching with other materials.
The author visits many of the manufacturers using these six materials in producing the products necessary to all of our lives, and he writes of how they are making the products, some of which I mentioned above. One of the discoveries the author made is these manufacturers are very secretive, and they refused the author permission to go into certain parts of their businesses. Even when he got permission to walk around these factories, it took him months, and years in some cases, to get permission to see how they were making stuff. They are companies completely unknown to the public, these companies who are actually behind the making of many components in Apple devices, for example, and they want to keep it that way.
Where are these six basic materials in everything we use today, basically speaking, to be found? How are they extracted out of rocks, mud and pockets in certain layers of the earth beneath our feet? The author visited the sites that are doing this work, and writes of the science behind the work.
The book was written by Conway because he asked himself the question:
”…what are the materials we really depend on? What are the physical ingredients without which civilization really would grind to a halt, and where do they actually come from?”
One of the main points Conway emphasizes in chapter after chapter is how interconnected the world is because of the necessity of acquiring the materials and of manufacturing what we use every day in our homes or carry in our pockets. All of the research and information he writes down in the book is thoroughly backed up by facts and figures, as well as by personal visits.
From the book:
”Look at the smartphone’s packaging. It says it was designed in California and assembled in China, but this is a vast oversimplification, for this miniature computer is a tapestry of technology that comes from all over the world. The display, the glass covering it, the battery, the cameras, the accelerometer, the modem and transceivers, the storage and power management chips; each comes from a different factory before they are assembled in China and then shipped to you.
Much of this activity does not happen in China or California. Indeed, it’s worth noting at this stage that pretty much all the physical components in the phone are not made by Apple itself, which is not really a manufacturer at all, but a brilliant re-packager of the technology made by other people. Even the chips that bear Apple’s name—the A16 Bionic was the latest iPhone chip at the time of writing—are in fact manufactured by another company altogether, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company or, as it’s better known, TSMC. That company in turn was only able to make the chip with the help of machines made by another, even more obscure company, ASML. And at the heart of ASML’s machines are critical components made by other companies, some of which will be familiar (the lenses are made by Zeiss, with glass from Schott) and some less so (the lasers are made by another German company, Trumpf.)
All of that covers only a fraction of the journey—the final steps our silicon atom takes before it is admitted into your smartphone. But our journey must begin not at the assembly plant or the silicon foundry where those tiny transistors are etched on to a silicon wafer, but with the very moment the silicon contained in that computer chip was first removed from the ground. It begins not in a manufacturing plant so sterile that there is barely a mite of dust to be found, but amid dirt, smoke and fire.”
“You hear the trucks and the clank of rocks long before you enter the premises [Serrabal Mine, Spain]. But once inside you realise what that blinding white expanse really is: an enormous rock quarry. Serrabal is a quartz mine. The vein of rock that lifts the Pico Sacro and its adjoining hillocks heavenwards is one of the purest quartz deposits to be found anywhere in the world, a rock so white that it is sought after far and wide.
The quartz pulled out of the ground here is sometimes used to make kitchen work surfaces. It is ground down into gravel for ornamental gardens and pure white sand for golf bunkers. But the real reason we have come here is for the bigger lumps of quartz that come from this hillside. These white, dusty chunks of stone are the raw materials that will eventually—months or more likely years down the line— become the next generation of silicon chips…”
“The company that owns the mine is Ferroglobe, a Spanish business which is the world’s biggest silicon metal producer outside of China….”
“The rocks from Serrabal are emptied on to the floor outside the warehouses, a pile of white stone on the grey concrete. After a while they are mixed with coking coal, (a baked form of coal) and woodchips and tipped into a furnace, heated up above 1,800C. What happens in that furnace, where an electrical current is run into the mixture of quartz and coal, remains something of a mystery.
“”Even after more than a hundred years of production, there are still things people don’t understand about what’s happening in this reaction,”” says Håvard Moe, one of the directors of Elkem, a Norwegian company, which is another one of Europe’s biggest silicon producers…”
This quote from the book is only a tiny sample of the interesting things I learned. I know this is an overworked word, but omg this book is AWESOME! And horrifying, when it becomes obvious we cannot stop manufacturing many of these products which in the making of are destroying the environment at the same time, too. The author has a chapter on the energy possibilities of wind power and solar power, but clearly the energy produced by renewable sources is not enough to power the manufacturing machines and the atomic cracking of basic chemicals, gases, rocks and materials necessary for stuff like concrete, steel, etc., stuff without which we would be living like people in the Middle Ages and earlier epochs without electricity, motors, medical equipment to see inside of our bodies without cutting, preserved foods, refrigerators, microwave ovens… and especially smart phones!
I had no idea of the chains of manufacturing the author reveals. One common product might be the result of mines/factories/chemicals from thirty to fifty countries! No country is a manufacturing island, which is one of the biggest takeaways from this book! Remember how Russia’s invasion of Ukraine completely disrupted the supply of natural gas and oil to Europe, stopping the heating of homes as well as the closing down of many many companies that were manufacturing materials necessary to common products in every modern home? The invasion also caused a grain shortage in Africa, leading to riots in some African cities because of rising prices of food. Did you notice the economic disruptions, and economic crashes and vital shipping/transportation stoppages, and the permanent closing of many businesses, to many economies around the world when Covid restrictions stopped everyone from working outside the home? Did you notice the slowness of things coming back to normal (arguably, because things did not exactly come back to normal in many instances even now, as we are still dealing with inflation and shortages of materials two years after). Many companies relied on selling built-up stored products which had been gathering dust in warehouses, while looking for new sources of the necessary hundreds of components to make new replacement products because the shutdown broke a lot of the previous manufacturing chains, which in turn has led to price increases.
The book has extensive sections of Notes, Bibliography and Index. I suspect the reader will want a physical copy, as I do, and will be reading it again and again. I also recommend watching videos about some of the manufacturing companies and machine/mining processes mentioned in the book on Youtube! Absolutely mind-boggling.
Unfortunately, every one of these basic materials in being transformed into cement, iron, steel, transistors, plastics, gasoline, pharmaceutical drugs, jewelry, cell phones, pencils, computers, electricity, fibre optic cables, glass, silicon chips, toilet paper, electric cars, batteries, trains, airplanes, trucks, headphones, televisions, sound bars, fertilizers, wood preservation, space stations, wind turbines, solar panels, wires, sewer pipes, test tubes, microscopes, MRI machines, scalpels, packaging, every kitchen utensil, pots and pans and kitchen sinks, etc etc etc etc etc etc, on and on, pumps CO2 into the atmosphere when manufactured using these six basic materials which are pulled out of the Earth and transformed by heat, chemicals and mixing and matching with other materials.
The author visits many of the manufacturers using these six materials in producing the products necessary to all of our lives, and he writes of how they are making the products, some of which I mentioned above. One of the discoveries the author made is these manufacturers are very secretive, and they refused the author permission to go into certain parts of their businesses. Even when he got permission to walk around these factories, it took him months, and years in some cases, to get permission to see how they were making stuff. They are companies completely unknown to the public, these companies who are actually behind the making of many components in Apple devices, for example, and they want to keep it that way.
Where are these six basic materials in everything we use today, basically speaking, to be found? How are they extracted out of rocks, mud and pockets in certain layers of the earth beneath our feet? The author visited the sites that are doing this work, and writes of the science behind the work.
The book was written by Conway because he asked himself the question:
”…what are the materials we really depend on? What are the physical ingredients without which civilization really would grind to a halt, and where do they actually come from?”
One of the main points Conway emphasizes in chapter after chapter is how interconnected the world is because of the necessity of acquiring the materials and of manufacturing what we use every day in our homes or carry in our pockets. All of the research and information he writes down in the book is thoroughly backed up by facts and figures, as well as by personal visits.
From the book:
”Look at the smartphone’s packaging. It says it was designed in California and assembled in China, but this is a vast oversimplification, for this miniature computer is a tapestry of technology that comes from all over the world. The display, the glass covering it, the battery, the cameras, the accelerometer, the modem and transceivers, the storage and power management chips; each comes from a different factory before they are assembled in China and then shipped to you.
Much of this activity does not happen in China or California. Indeed, it’s worth noting at this stage that pretty much all the physical components in the phone are not made by Apple itself, which is not really a manufacturer at all, but a brilliant re-packager of the technology made by other people. Even the chips that bear Apple’s name—the A16 Bionic was the latest iPhone chip at the time of writing—are in fact manufactured by another company altogether, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company or, as it’s better known, TSMC. That company in turn was only able to make the chip with the help of machines made by another, even more obscure company, ASML. And at the heart of ASML’s machines are critical components made by other companies, some of which will be familiar (the lenses are made by Zeiss, with glass from Schott) and some less so (the lasers are made by another German company, Trumpf.)
All of that covers only a fraction of the journey—the final steps our silicon atom takes before it is admitted into your smartphone. But our journey must begin not at the assembly plant or the silicon foundry where those tiny transistors are etched on to a silicon wafer, but with the very moment the silicon contained in that computer chip was first removed from the ground. It begins not in a manufacturing plant so sterile that there is barely a mite of dust to be found, but amid dirt, smoke and fire.”
“You hear the trucks and the clank of rocks long before you enter the premises [Serrabal Mine, Spain]. But once inside you realise what that blinding white expanse really is: an enormous rock quarry. Serrabal is a quartz mine. The vein of rock that lifts the Pico Sacro and its adjoining hillocks heavenwards is one of the purest quartz deposits to be found anywhere in the world, a rock so white that it is sought after far and wide.
The quartz pulled out of the ground here is sometimes used to make kitchen work surfaces. It is ground down into gravel for ornamental gardens and pure white sand for golf bunkers. But the real reason we have come here is for the bigger lumps of quartz that come from this hillside. These white, dusty chunks of stone are the raw materials that will eventually—months or more likely years down the line— become the next generation of silicon chips…”
“The company that owns the mine is Ferroglobe, a Spanish business which is the world’s biggest silicon metal producer outside of China….”
“The rocks from Serrabal are emptied on to the floor outside the warehouses, a pile of white stone on the grey concrete. After a while they are mixed with coking coal, (a baked form of coal) and woodchips and tipped into a furnace, heated up above 1,800C. What happens in that furnace, where an electrical current is run into the mixture of quartz and coal, remains something of a mystery.
“”Even after more than a hundred years of production, there are still things people don’t understand about what’s happening in this reaction,”” says Håvard Moe, one of the directors of Elkem, a Norwegian company, which is another one of Europe’s biggest silicon producers…”
This quote from the book is only a tiny sample of the interesting things I learned. I know this is an overworked word, but omg this book is AWESOME! And horrifying, when it becomes obvious we cannot stop manufacturing many of these products which in the making of are destroying the environment at the same time, too. The author has a chapter on the energy possibilities of wind power and solar power, but clearly the energy produced by renewable sources is not enough to power the manufacturing machines and the atomic cracking of basic chemicals, gases, rocks and materials necessary for stuff like concrete, steel, etc., stuff without which we would be living like people in the Middle Ages and earlier epochs without electricity, motors, medical equipment to see inside of our bodies without cutting, preserved foods, refrigerators, microwave ovens… and especially smart phones!
I had no idea of the chains of manufacturing the author reveals. One common product might be the result of mines/factories/chemicals from thirty to fifty countries! No country is a manufacturing island, which is one of the biggest takeaways from this book! Remember how Russia’s invasion of Ukraine completely disrupted the supply of natural gas and oil to Europe, stopping the heating of homes as well as the closing down of many many companies that were manufacturing materials necessary to common products in every modern home? The invasion also caused a grain shortage in Africa, leading to riots in some African cities because of rising prices of food. Did you notice the economic disruptions, and economic crashes and vital shipping/transportation stoppages, and the permanent closing of many businesses, to many economies around the world when Covid restrictions stopped everyone from working outside the home? Did you notice the slowness of things coming back to normal (arguably, because things did not exactly come back to normal in many instances even now, as we are still dealing with inflation and shortages of materials two years after). Many companies relied on selling built-up stored products which had been gathering dust in warehouses, while looking for new sources of the necessary hundreds of components to make new replacement products because the shutdown broke a lot of the previous manufacturing chains, which in turn has led to price increases.
The book has extensive sections of Notes, Bibliography and Index. I suspect the reader will want a physical copy, as I do, and will be reading it again and again. I also recommend watching videos about some of the manufacturing companies and machine/mining processes mentioned in the book on Youtube! Absolutely mind-boggling.
June 24, 2024
Thanks to division of labor, today we don’t know much about how anything in our life is made of, even though we knew where we bought them (Amazon) and where they were made (prob. China, or at least before decoupling). This book is full of little stories to make you appreciate the important roles basic materials like sand played in our life, and how global supply chain has become.
Here is a little story that I found funny about dependency on materials. By 1914, Britain was reliant on Germany, or rather Zeiss, for some 60 per cent of all its precision glass. Upon the declaration of war, those German supplies were cut off immediately. British Army's Field Marshal Lord Roberts, issued an "almost despairing appeal" for the general public to donate any binoculars. In 1915, a secret agent was dispatched to neutral Switzerland hoping to procure binoculars from the very country Britain was fighting. Through Swiss channels, Germany replied. I don’t know about you, but “Nein” would have been my guess. (Indeed, I would have sent 9 pairs of binoculars just make a pun.) But no, Germany would send 32,000 binoculars *immediately*, and 15,000 a month in future. This was not from some pan-European commercial cooperation, this was from the German *War Office”. To sweeten the deal, they would also send 500 telescopic rifle sights (and 5,000 - 10,000 a month in the future). If you think they lost their marbles, you are close. They lost their rubber (supply).
Here is a little story that I found funny about dependency on materials. By 1914, Britain was reliant on Germany, or rather Zeiss, for some 60 per cent of all its precision glass. Upon the declaration of war, those German supplies were cut off immediately. British Army's Field Marshal Lord Roberts, issued an "almost despairing appeal" for the general public to donate any binoculars. In 1915, a secret agent was dispatched to neutral Switzerland hoping to procure binoculars from the very country Britain was fighting. Through Swiss channels, Germany replied. I don’t know about you, but “Nein” would have been my guess. (Indeed, I would have sent 9 pairs of binoculars just make a pun.) But no, Germany would send 32,000 binoculars *immediately*, and 15,000 a month in future. This was not from some pan-European commercial cooperation, this was from the German *War Office”. To sweeten the deal, they would also send 500 telescopic rifle sights (and 5,000 - 10,000 a month in the future). If you think they lost their marbles, you are close. They lost their rubber (supply).
August 25, 2023
A must-read - something I don't say lightly - to understand the modern world. Perhaps best summed up as "Capitalism, eh? Mental."
This is a properly fascinating balance of macro and micro scale revelations about the more practical, physical side of how the world works - and what that means for everything and everyone on the planet.
Huge amounts here were totally new to me, and much of it shocking - from the sheer complexity of production processes and supply chains, to the fragility of our current ways of living. Having read Chip Wars earlier in the year I thought the section on silicon wouldn't contain much new, but even that was rammed with things I wasn't aware of. The other chapters made me feel utterly ignorant about the material world and how everyday objects are made (and disposed of), as well as get even more daunted at the sheer scale of the challenge facing the world as we seek to undo the consumerist chaos of our modern way of life.
But despite all the existential angst, there's still some hope here. The emphasis on human ingenuity, innovation and discovery that constantly sits alongside stories of exploitation, destruction and callousness means it's possible to come away from this book optimistic.
This is a properly fascinating balance of macro and micro scale revelations about the more practical, physical side of how the world works - and what that means for everything and everyone on the planet.
Huge amounts here were totally new to me, and much of it shocking - from the sheer complexity of production processes and supply chains, to the fragility of our current ways of living. Having read Chip Wars earlier in the year I thought the section on silicon wouldn't contain much new, but even that was rammed with things I wasn't aware of. The other chapters made me feel utterly ignorant about the material world and how everyday objects are made (and disposed of), as well as get even more daunted at the sheer scale of the challenge facing the world as we seek to undo the consumerist chaos of our modern way of life.
But despite all the existential angst, there's still some hope here. The emphasis on human ingenuity, innovation and discovery that constantly sits alongside stories of exploitation, destruction and callousness means it's possible to come away from this book optimistic.
February 7, 2024
A fascinating, cross-disciplinary look at how six raw earth materials (sand, salt, iron, copper, oil, and lithium) have been mined, refined, extracted, utilized, and exploited over the course of human history. Conway traveled extensively while researching this book, and he incorporates historical research alongside modern research on the deleterious environmental and socioeconomic impacts of many current extraction and mining practices.
Further reading:
The World in a Grain: The Story of Sand and How It Transformed Civilization
Lithium: A Doctor, a Drug, and a Breakthrough
The Underworld: Journeys to the Depths of the Ocean (for more discussion about deep sea mining)
Further reading:
The World in a Grain: The Story of Sand and How It Transformed Civilization
Lithium: A Doctor, a Drug, and a Breakthrough
The Underworld: Journeys to the Depths of the Ocean (for more discussion about deep sea mining)
April 16, 2024
Mózg ugotowany 🔥
April 25, 2024
We live in an age of information and data, and it’s easy to lose sight of the physical underpinnings of our world. Cloud storage may seem ethereal, but the servers that house it and the electric grid connecting them still very much require down-to-earth materials.
Indeed, ‘down to earth’ aptly describes the starting point of Ed Conway’s new book, “Material World”. While visiting a gold mine in the Nevada desert, the author found himself staring into a giant hole in the ground – so gigantic indeed that it had entirely swallowed the sacred Mount Tenabo revered by the indigenous people. Which made him realize how little we know about where our everyday materials come from and what measures we must take to wrest them from the earth.
“Material World” is divided into six parts, each dedicated to one key substance shaping our world: sand (or silicon), salt, iron, copper, oil, and lithium. This choice may strike you as somewhat arbitrary. But a general pattern soon emerges as Conway methodically recounts the history of each of the materials, its mining and production, and its societal and environmental impact.
The sobering message is so pervasive that it wouldn’t really matter if the book focused on three or ten substances instead: Our reliance on these materials remains almost absolute. There are often few ways to extract them efficiently, let alone without massively destroying our environment – and finding substitutes is a daunting task. Technological improvements have often come to the rescue (which is why ‘peak oil’ remains elusive), but these in turn lead to increased demand via a rebound effect. To make matters worse, our global supply chains are surprisingly vulnerable, as exposed by recent wars and the pandemic.
Another recurring theme is that, historically, the solution to one problem sooner or later turned out to be a major problem in its own right. Cars were once lauded for remedying the noise and pollution caused by horses. Oil used to save whales from the brink of extinction. Ironically, as we transition toward ‘clean’ electric vehicles and renewable energy, we find ourselves more reliant on materials such as lithium and copper (and... well, oil).
Along the way, we learn about a myriad of curious tidbits. Sand, or its constituent silicon, has been a key driver of scientific progress, from early lenses to today’s transistors (which are smaller than viruses). Salt has been produced and traded since the Stone Age and was once tantamount to a currency; thus the word sal-ary. Today’s greenhouse fruits, like tomatoes, are essentially based on fossil fuels. And our modern-day abundance of cheap plastics is largely owed to their crucial role in WWII. The list goes on.
As fascinating as some of these factbites may be, the path through the book’s 500 pages is paved with many tediously repetitive details and often trails off on yet another tangent. While many of the reports on excursions to mining and production sites are well written, all six parts follow the same layout and invoke the same take-home messages, which becomes a tad monotonous after six iterations. Compared to Mark Miodownik’s engaging “Stuff Matters” or Bill Bryson’s witty prose, this work feels somewhat dry and uninspired. It doesn’t help that Conway focuses solely on economic and production aspects: Scientific explanations on how the materials’ properties come about are few and far between, and those are often jargon heavy and not particularly illuminating. The book is also completely devoid of any graphical illustrations.
So “Material World” may not be a page turner. Nonetheless, it offers a detailed and thought-provoking look into the history and potential future of the substances our world relies on – and will continue to rely on. Our future rests not just in the cloud but also, as it were, in the ground beneath our feet.
(3.5/5)
Indeed, ‘down to earth’ aptly describes the starting point of Ed Conway’s new book, “Material World”. While visiting a gold mine in the Nevada desert, the author found himself staring into a giant hole in the ground – so gigantic indeed that it had entirely swallowed the sacred Mount Tenabo revered by the indigenous people. Which made him realize how little we know about where our everyday materials come from and what measures we must take to wrest them from the earth.
“Material World” is divided into six parts, each dedicated to one key substance shaping our world: sand (or silicon), salt, iron, copper, oil, and lithium. This choice may strike you as somewhat arbitrary. But a general pattern soon emerges as Conway methodically recounts the history of each of the materials, its mining and production, and its societal and environmental impact.
The sobering message is so pervasive that it wouldn’t really matter if the book focused on three or ten substances instead: Our reliance on these materials remains almost absolute. There are often few ways to extract them efficiently, let alone without massively destroying our environment – and finding substitutes is a daunting task. Technological improvements have often come to the rescue (which is why ‘peak oil’ remains elusive), but these in turn lead to increased demand via a rebound effect. To make matters worse, our global supply chains are surprisingly vulnerable, as exposed by recent wars and the pandemic.
Another recurring theme is that, historically, the solution to one problem sooner or later turned out to be a major problem in its own right. Cars were once lauded for remedying the noise and pollution caused by horses. Oil used to save whales from the brink of extinction. Ironically, as we transition toward ‘clean’ electric vehicles and renewable energy, we find ourselves more reliant on materials such as lithium and copper (and... well, oil).
Along the way, we learn about a myriad of curious tidbits. Sand, or its constituent silicon, has been a key driver of scientific progress, from early lenses to today’s transistors (which are smaller than viruses). Salt has been produced and traded since the Stone Age and was once tantamount to a currency; thus the word sal-ary. Today’s greenhouse fruits, like tomatoes, are essentially based on fossil fuels. And our modern-day abundance of cheap plastics is largely owed to their crucial role in WWII. The list goes on.
As fascinating as some of these factbites may be, the path through the book’s 500 pages is paved with many tediously repetitive details and often trails off on yet another tangent. While many of the reports on excursions to mining and production sites are well written, all six parts follow the same layout and invoke the same take-home messages, which becomes a tad monotonous after six iterations. Compared to Mark Miodownik’s engaging “Stuff Matters” or Bill Bryson’s witty prose, this work feels somewhat dry and uninspired. It doesn’t help that Conway focuses solely on economic and production aspects: Scientific explanations on how the materials’ properties come about are few and far between, and those are often jargon heavy and not particularly illuminating. The book is also completely devoid of any graphical illustrations.
So “Material World” may not be a page turner. Nonetheless, it offers a detailed and thought-provoking look into the history and potential future of the substances our world relies on – and will continue to rely on. Our future rests not just in the cloud but also, as it were, in the ground beneath our feet.
(3.5/5)
June 6, 2024
Absolutely amazing book. It takes some storytelling genius to make the history of six minerals, most of which e.g. sand are superficially unexciting, into a riveting and entertaining narrative.
Essential reading, both as a study of the past and a possible signpost to the future.
As the author's day job is Economics Editor of Sky News his audio narration does veer occasionally into newsreader bombast mode, but it's a very minor criticism given what he's achieved with this.
Essential reading, both as a study of the past and a possible signpost to the future.
As the author's day job is Economics Editor of Sky News his audio narration does veer occasionally into newsreader bombast mode, but it's a very minor criticism given what he's achieved with this.
December 26, 2023
This book was a lot of things: a love letter to manufacturing, a call to mindfulness about material use, and also quite simply a mindf*** because you learn answers to questions you wouldn't even think to ask!
April 24, 2024
Material World takes us through history and across the world, tracing the journey of raw resources through intricate processes to create the products that make up our world. It is an entertaining journey, enlightening, surprising, and too often distressing. You may think that reading about sand or iron would be dull, but you would be wrong. Conway visits the sources of the materials, incorporates annedocts from human history, explains their social, industrial, and environmental impact, and projects what the future will look as we struggle to keep up with demand.
Sand gives us glass, cement, and silicon.
Salt is necessary to human health but also is essential to the fertilizer, chemical, and pharmaceutical industry.
Iron is needed for steel used in our machines and buildings.
Copper gave us the circuitry to light and power our world.
Oil and gas fuels our vehicles and heats our homes, is the source of plastics, and powers hydroponic agriculture.
And lithium, “white gold,” goes into the batteries that store energy.
The modern world requires all of these materials. And nothing is made without oil. Conway doubts that we can arrive at net zero without a new energy source and he considers the emerging technologies.
These materials are sourced in one country, processed in another, an manufactured into goods in another. It is a fragile web, and a breakdown in geopolitics would threaten the supply chain.
As civilization requires batteries to store power, demand will outpace the ability to mine lithium; recycling to reclaim raw materials will become all important.
Conway believes we need to understand the chain that brings us the wonders of modern technology and life. He leaves us with hope that technology will evolve to a more efficient and sustainable energy source. “These six substances helped us survive and thrive. They helped us make magic. They can do it again,” he ends.
Thanks to the publisher for a free book.
Sand gives us glass, cement, and silicon.
Salt is necessary to human health but also is essential to the fertilizer, chemical, and pharmaceutical industry.
Iron is needed for steel used in our machines and buildings.
Copper gave us the circuitry to light and power our world.
Oil and gas fuels our vehicles and heats our homes, is the source of plastics, and powers hydroponic agriculture.
And lithium, “white gold,” goes into the batteries that store energy.
The modern world requires all of these materials. And nothing is made without oil. Conway doubts that we can arrive at net zero without a new energy source and he considers the emerging technologies.
These materials are sourced in one country, processed in another, an manufactured into goods in another. It is a fragile web, and a breakdown in geopolitics would threaten the supply chain.
As civilization requires batteries to store power, demand will outpace the ability to mine lithium; recycling to reclaim raw materials will become all important.
Conway believes we need to understand the chain that brings us the wonders of modern technology and life. He leaves us with hope that technology will evolve to a more efficient and sustainable energy source. “These six substances helped us survive and thrive. They helped us make magic. They can do it again,” he ends.
Thanks to the publisher for a free book.
February 26, 2024
Enjoyed this book a lot, was enlightening and fun to read at the same time. Certainly talked about issues of exploitation, pollution, climate change, etc, but there was no ranting or scare-mongering or finger-wagging. Lots of intriguing historical bits and accounts of the author’s travels to mines, foundries, factories, etc.
Reminded me of Vaclav Smil’s book “HowThe World Really Works” but it’s far more readable (the author recommends Smil’s work and that book specifically in the very elaborate bibliography).
Reminded me of Vaclav Smil’s book “HowThe World Really Works” but it’s far more readable (the author recommends Smil’s work and that book specifically in the very elaborate bibliography).
August 8, 2024
"Material World" is an amazing read that I'd highly recommend to anyone. Conway hit this one out of the park!
The book tells the story of the world, essentially, encapsulated in the exploration of a few crucial materials - sand, salt, iron, copper, oil, and lithium - their uses, history, and impact. Maybe it doesn't sound like the most exciting subject matter, but it's a page-turner. Our world is an interconnected one existing of vast networks that we generally do not comprehend, and all the more vulnerable because of it. Conway illustrates this beautifully through his telling of these building blocks of history... and future.
Well-written, utterly fascinating, and terrifyingly salient, this is a book you don't want to miss if!
The book tells the story of the world, essentially, encapsulated in the exploration of a few crucial materials - sand, salt, iron, copper, oil, and lithium - their uses, history, and impact. Maybe it doesn't sound like the most exciting subject matter, but it's a page-turner. Our world is an interconnected one existing of vast networks that we generally do not comprehend, and all the more vulnerable because of it. Conway illustrates this beautifully through his telling of these building blocks of history... and future.
Well-written, utterly fascinating, and terrifyingly salient, this is a book you don't want to miss if!
May 30, 2024
An absolutely fascinating, engaging, and revelatory glimpse into some common and uncommon materials we take for granted. Conway's six essentials are: sand, salt, oil, iron, copper, oil, and lithium. This sounds like it was a fun book to write with all the travel to exotic, remote, and secret locations and facilities.
May 31, 2024
Eu comecei esse livro sem saber muito o que esperar e fui surpreendido com uma das narrativas e histórias mais engajantes que eu já tive o prazer de ler!
"Material World" me fez perceber a complexidade para se obter o que eu tinha como garantido: os materiais que compõem tudo que eu uso diariamente.
Recomendo fortemente para todos que têm a mente curiosa!
"Material World" me fez perceber a complexidade para se obter o que eu tinha como garantido: os materiais que compõem tudo que eu uso diariamente.
Recomendo fortemente para todos que têm a mente curiosa!
January 17, 2024
This is a fascinating book that reminds us how we, now more than ever, are dependent on raw materials mined from the earth for sustaining our modern way of life.
The author concentrates on six essential raw materials: sand, salt, iron and steel, copper, crude oil and gas, and lithium.
Each material gets a brief historic overview and a travelogue around the world describing the complex web of supply chains from mining to refining to manufacturing processes to final products.
Some examples:
Sand provides the silicon, with which solar panels are manufactured.
Sand also provides the silicon, with which silicon wafers are manufactured, from which semi conductors are manufactured, with which computer chips are produced.
Silicon is mined from sand mainly in Spain.
That silicon is exported to Germany where it gets refined into polysilicon which then gets exported to China for the production of solar panels.
A more pure silicon gets mined in North Carolina, gets transported to Oregon where it gets transformed into silicon wafers which get exported to Taiwan for the manufacturing of semiconductors which supplies the world with microchips for computers, smart phones, cars, appliances, robotics and AI. Those semiconductors are exported to Malaysia where
wiring is added to be attached to circuit boards.
Then they are shipped to China to be assembled e.g. in smart phones in factories such as Foxconn.
Without sand, we also would not have glass, optical instruments or buildings made of concrete.
Without iron and steel we would have no skyscrapers, bridges, cars, airplanes, ships, railways, engines, or medical equipments.
Without copper there would be no electricity.
And without lithium there would be no batteries to store electricity for our smartphones, laptops and EVs.
Fuel gets its own mini historic overview from wood to coal to crude oil with its petrochemical byproducts (plastics) and gas and the resulting climate change problem.
Conway is hopeful regarding green energy but points out its own issues: for example, wind turbines need enormous amounts of raw materials for their construction: iron, concrete, plastics, fiberglass and copper.
One little problem with the current state of affairs is that all these raw materials are finite. (some more than others).
Conway is hopeful that companies will follow in the footsteps of the pioneer mining company in Antwerp, Belgium, Umicore (the former Union Minière du Katanga) which recycles old metals into new ones, a process he calls "unmanufacturing".
This process will provide the necessary raw materials for our civilization without depleting the finite resources from the earth.
Deep sea mining for copper, cobalt and nickel gets mentioned, but it has unknown environmental consequences.
I thoroughly enjoyed the descriptions of the many mines and factories involved in the mining and processing of all six materials which Conway has visited for this book.
The most impressive narrated tour was that of Taiwan's fabled TSMC's Fab 18 plant.
He does a fantastic job of illustrating the geopolitical importance of those countries that have rich resources of those essential materials (e.g. Chile, Bolivia and Argentina for lithium) or that have quasi monopolies for the production of certain essential components, such as Taiwan's TSMC for semi conductors (only competitor is South Korea's Samsung-and Intel is a generation behind) and China for batteries (80% of world production).
The author concentrates on six essential raw materials: sand, salt, iron and steel, copper, crude oil and gas, and lithium.
Each material gets a brief historic overview and a travelogue around the world describing the complex web of supply chains from mining to refining to manufacturing processes to final products.
Some examples:
Sand provides the silicon, with which solar panels are manufactured.
Sand also provides the silicon, with which silicon wafers are manufactured, from which semi conductors are manufactured, with which computer chips are produced.
Silicon is mined from sand mainly in Spain.
That silicon is exported to Germany where it gets refined into polysilicon which then gets exported to China for the production of solar panels.
A more pure silicon gets mined in North Carolina, gets transported to Oregon where it gets transformed into silicon wafers which get exported to Taiwan for the manufacturing of semiconductors which supplies the world with microchips for computers, smart phones, cars, appliances, robotics and AI. Those semiconductors are exported to Malaysia where
wiring is added to be attached to circuit boards.
Then they are shipped to China to be assembled e.g. in smart phones in factories such as Foxconn.
Without sand, we also would not have glass, optical instruments or buildings made of concrete.
Without iron and steel we would have no skyscrapers, bridges, cars, airplanes, ships, railways, engines, or medical equipments.
Without copper there would be no electricity.
And without lithium there would be no batteries to store electricity for our smartphones, laptops and EVs.
Fuel gets its own mini historic overview from wood to coal to crude oil with its petrochemical byproducts (plastics) and gas and the resulting climate change problem.
Conway is hopeful regarding green energy but points out its own issues: for example, wind turbines need enormous amounts of raw materials for their construction: iron, concrete, plastics, fiberglass and copper.
One little problem with the current state of affairs is that all these raw materials are finite. (some more than others).
Conway is hopeful that companies will follow in the footsteps of the pioneer mining company in Antwerp, Belgium, Umicore (the former Union Minière du Katanga) which recycles old metals into new ones, a process he calls "unmanufacturing".
This process will provide the necessary raw materials for our civilization without depleting the finite resources from the earth.
Deep sea mining for copper, cobalt and nickel gets mentioned, but it has unknown environmental consequences.
I thoroughly enjoyed the descriptions of the many mines and factories involved in the mining and processing of all six materials which Conway has visited for this book.
The most impressive narrated tour was that of Taiwan's fabled TSMC's Fab 18 plant.
He does a fantastic job of illustrating the geopolitical importance of those countries that have rich resources of those essential materials (e.g. Chile, Bolivia and Argentina for lithium) or that have quasi monopolies for the production of certain essential components, such as Taiwan's TSMC for semi conductors (only competitor is South Korea's Samsung-and Intel is a generation behind) and China for batteries (80% of world production).
March 17, 2024
If you were a big fan of Guns, Germs and Steel in the early 2000s, you will probably want to pick this one up.
Material World focuses on what the author identifies as six core materials that nourish, shelter and provide power for us: sand, salt, iron, copper, oil, lithium. The book has a section dedicated to each and describes the supporting industries dedicated to obtaining and honing these materials (many of which he visits in person). He argues that many of us have moved to living in what he calls the “ethereal world”— even if you have a job where you stare at screen all day—that is very much affected by what he calls the “material world”. I found this book very interesting because I am fascinated by how little people consider where things actually come from. Many do not realize it until we suffer a supply chain issue (like what we saw during Covid or after a Russia’s invasion of Ukraine). If we have any hope of unmanufacturing, reaching our net zero goal for our world’s carbon footprint— we have to inform ourselves and educate the next generation working in these industries to help make them better.
Conway makes what could be dry subject matter easy to read and applicable to the real world. He always brings a human cost aspect to obtaining these materials. I think the most pressing sections are his last two, which are oil and lithium. Read about what is going on in resource-rich countries facing terrible exploitation and you might have an idea. Even if you think your electric car is changing the world, you may be surprised to find out the actual cost of obtaining the lithium for your battery.
This is great nonfiction, even for people who don’t love nonfiction and would make for a really informative book club discussion. I’m all about trying to be a more conscious consumer, and none of these things exist in a vacuum. I think it is important for all of us to learn how every single object that surrounds, fuels and powers us comes to be in existence. These are industries that our elected officials have heavy influence over. This subject is applicable to all of us!
Material World focuses on what the author identifies as six core materials that nourish, shelter and provide power for us: sand, salt, iron, copper, oil, lithium. The book has a section dedicated to each and describes the supporting industries dedicated to obtaining and honing these materials (many of which he visits in person). He argues that many of us have moved to living in what he calls the “ethereal world”— even if you have a job where you stare at screen all day—that is very much affected by what he calls the “material world”. I found this book very interesting because I am fascinated by how little people consider where things actually come from. Many do not realize it until we suffer a supply chain issue (like what we saw during Covid or after a Russia’s invasion of Ukraine). If we have any hope of unmanufacturing, reaching our net zero goal for our world’s carbon footprint— we have to inform ourselves and educate the next generation working in these industries to help make them better.
Conway makes what could be dry subject matter easy to read and applicable to the real world. He always brings a human cost aspect to obtaining these materials. I think the most pressing sections are his last two, which are oil and lithium. Read about what is going on in resource-rich countries facing terrible exploitation and you might have an idea. Even if you think your electric car is changing the world, you may be surprised to find out the actual cost of obtaining the lithium for your battery.
This is great nonfiction, even for people who don’t love nonfiction and would make for a really informative book club discussion. I’m all about trying to be a more conscious consumer, and none of these things exist in a vacuum. I think it is important for all of us to learn how every single object that surrounds, fuels and powers us comes to be in existence. These are industries that our elected officials have heavy influence over. This subject is applicable to all of us!
July 24, 2024
Those who question why it isn't easy to get to net zero carbon emissions should give this one a spin!
While we are currently on a positive trajectory with renewables and making energy rather than burning it, we're still a long way off with batteries, but this book gave me hope that we'll figure it out.
Here are a few fun facts about each material via this read:
Sand
While it plays a crucial role in chip creation via silicon, historically glass has been sand's glowing offspring. Turns out in WW1 Britain had fallen so far behind in their development of optical manufacturing that they couldn't produce enough or sufficient quantities of optical aids for their armed forces which are important via binoculars/scopes. Germany happened to have perfected the process (Enter Zeiss) Germany however didn't have enough rubber for their war machine and the two countries who were at war with each other ended up trading materials to better kill each other……
Salt
Chloralkali Process (Caustic Soda) is what it's all about!
Salt is pumped out of the fields and into a processing plant. Which then pipes it into a room of electrolysis cells with a strong current running through it that then SPLIT their components via an electrolytic cell. They're then split into 3 main parts
1. Chlorine gas - One end of the cell
a. Disinfecting water (Swimming Pools)
b. Making PVC (Polyvinyl Chloride)
c. Bleach
2. Sodium Hydroxide - Produced in the Solution - Also known as caustic soda
a. Soap and detergents
b. Paper
c. Food Processing
3. Hydrogen Gas - other end of the cell
a. Making Ammonia
Hydrogenation (Used in the food industry to turn oils into solid fats, like margarine)
Iron
John Deere's first invention was the steel plow in 1837
China has produced more steel in the past decade than the US has since the beginning of the 20th century
Copper
The average car contains about a mile of copper wire connecting sensors and electrical components. In electric cars, we need 3 or 4x of that.
Oil
Fracking (Process founded by George Mitchell in the 1980s, but only mainstream in the late 2000s) made the US energy independent, yet the oil (light and sweet) we get from it is shipped off to refineries in Europe and Asia because our refineries were expecting oil from Canada and Mexico which are a bit heavier and sour).
. Ethylene, a waste product John D. Rockefeller complained about he saw being burned at one of his refineries and now it's foundational an enormous new petrochemical sector…..plastic exists because of it
Lithium
What happens inside of a battery is a controlled chemical reaction, and an effort to channel that explosive energy-contained materials that turn it into electric current. And there is no ingredient more explosive than lithium.
The battery age is giving birth to a new age of electrostates (Chile, Argentina, and Australia)
While we are currently on a positive trajectory with renewables and making energy rather than burning it, we're still a long way off with batteries, but this book gave me hope that we'll figure it out.
Here are a few fun facts about each material via this read:
Sand
While it plays a crucial role in chip creation via silicon, historically glass has been sand's glowing offspring. Turns out in WW1 Britain had fallen so far behind in their development of optical manufacturing that they couldn't produce enough or sufficient quantities of optical aids for their armed forces which are important via binoculars/scopes. Germany happened to have perfected the process (Enter Zeiss) Germany however didn't have enough rubber for their war machine and the two countries who were at war with each other ended up trading materials to better kill each other……
Salt
Chloralkali Process (Caustic Soda) is what it's all about!
Salt is pumped out of the fields and into a processing plant. Which then pipes it into a room of electrolysis cells with a strong current running through it that then SPLIT their components via an electrolytic cell. They're then split into 3 main parts
1. Chlorine gas - One end of the cell
a. Disinfecting water (Swimming Pools)
b. Making PVC (Polyvinyl Chloride)
c. Bleach
2. Sodium Hydroxide - Produced in the Solution - Also known as caustic soda
a. Soap and detergents
b. Paper
c. Food Processing
3. Hydrogen Gas - other end of the cell
a. Making Ammonia
Hydrogenation (Used in the food industry to turn oils into solid fats, like margarine)
Iron
John Deere's first invention was the steel plow in 1837
China has produced more steel in the past decade than the US has since the beginning of the 20th century
Copper
The average car contains about a mile of copper wire connecting sensors and electrical components. In electric cars, we need 3 or 4x of that.
Oil
Fracking (Process founded by George Mitchell in the 1980s, but only mainstream in the late 2000s) made the US energy independent, yet the oil (light and sweet) we get from it is shipped off to refineries in Europe and Asia because our refineries were expecting oil from Canada and Mexico which are a bit heavier and sour).
. Ethylene, a waste product John D. Rockefeller complained about he saw being burned at one of his refineries and now it's foundational an enormous new petrochemical sector…..plastic exists because of it
Lithium
What happens inside of a battery is a controlled chemical reaction, and an effort to channel that explosive energy-contained materials that turn it into electric current. And there is no ingredient more explosive than lithium.
The battery age is giving birth to a new age of electrostates (Chile, Argentina, and Australia)
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
August 5, 2024
Fascinating book that details well the challenges that lay ahead & puts in perspective the spoils of riches that society has enjoyed in recent years due to the exploitation of natural resources. Packed with eye-popping anecdotes and statistics, a prerequisite to one’s understanding of the fundamental resources that support society “behind the scenes.” Offers valuable recognition to fossil fuels & the mining of metals/minerals for incredible societal advancements, but cautions the insatiable appetite for consumption that we have now developed. A delicate balance of raising alarm while offering hope to a sustainable future.
June 22, 2024
3.5/5: Loved the concept for this book: we all live in modern “ethereal” bliss where we don’t need to know where all the critical materials that make the modern world come from, so let’s open up the hood and see what’s underneath in a supply chain travelogue. Lots of respect for Ed Conway for going on the journey and sharing it. I want to do something like this at some point myself!
Unfortunately, the book lacked the journalistic pace that could have made it a lot stronger. Worth the read if you’re a supply chain aficionado but otherwise, wait for someone at HBO to turn this into a documentary (or read some of the highlights I made visible).
Unfortunately, the book lacked the journalistic pace that could have made it a lot stronger. Worth the read if you’re a supply chain aficionado but otherwise, wait for someone at HBO to turn this into a documentary (or read some of the highlights I made visible).
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