Smaller Faster Lighter Denser Cheaper How Innovation Keeps Proving The Catastrophists Wrong

A celebration of innovations that have produced cheaper and more abundant energy, faster computing, lighter vehicles and other technological benefits...

Kirkus Reviews

In the face of today’s environmental and economic challenges, doomsayers preach that the only way to stave off disaster is for humans to reverse course: to de-industrialize, re-localize, ban the use of modern energy sources, and forswear prosperity. But in this provocative and optimistic rebuke to the catastrophists, Robert Bryce shows how innovation and the inexorable human desire to make things Smaller Faster Lighter Denser Cheaper is providing consumers with Cheaper and more abundant energy, Faster computing, Lighter vehicles, and myriad other goods. That same desire is fostering unprecedented prosperity, greater liberty, and yes, better environmental protection.

Utilizing on-the-ground reporting from Ottawa to Panama City and Pittsburgh to Bakersfield, Bryce shows how we have, for centuries, been pushing for Smaller Faster solutions to our problems. From the vacuum tube, mass-produced fertilizer, and the printing press to mobile phones, nanotech, and advanced drill rigs, Bryce demonstrates how cutting-edge companies and breakthrough technologies have created a world in which people are living longer, freer, healthier, lives than at any time in human history.

The push toward Smaller Faster Lighter Denser Cheaper is happening across multiple sectors. Bryce profiles innovative individuals and companies, from long-established ones like Ford and Intel to upstarts like Aquion Energy and Khan Academy. And he zeroes in on the energy industry, proving that the future belongs to the high power density sources that can provide the enormous quantities of energy the world demands.

The tools we need to save the planet aren’t to be found in the technologies or lifestyles of the past. Nor must we sacrifice prosperity and human progress to ensure our survival. The catastrophists have been wrong since the days of Thomas Malthus. This is the time to embrace the innovators and businesses all over the world who are making things Smaller Faster Lighter Denser Cheaper.

Robert Bryce is a senior fellow with the Center for Energy Policy and the Environment at the Manhattan Institute. He has been writing about energy for two decades, and his articles have appeared in numerous publications ranging from The Wall Street Journal to The Nation and the Atlantic Monthly to the Washington Post.

Bryce’s first book, Pipe Dreams: Greed, Ego, and the Death of Enron, was named one of the best nonfiction books of 2002 by Publishers Weekly. In 2004, he published Cronies: Oil, The Bushes, and the Rise of Texas, "America's Superstate". In 2008, he published Gusher of Lies: The Dangerous Delusions of "Energy Independence". A review of Gusher of Lies in the New York Times called Bryce "something of a visionary and perhaps even a revolutionary."

REVIEWS
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