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Material World by Ed Conway
624.
In this book Ed Conway rather usefully splits the world into the Ethereal and the Material (see what he did there?!) People like me and probably you are living in an Ethereal world where everything is mediated by phones, laptops, supermarkets. Even our money is going Ethereal. We never meet the Material world.
We ignore the fact that most of our food is grown with fossil fuels; that our phones have silicon chips in them that are smaller than a virus and hulked over by a blood cell; that many industries are totally dependent on salt to function, for example to clean dirty water with chlorine; that sand suitable for building is running out and that copper is getting more difficult to mine.
Hardly anyone knows how to make anything from the ground up. I might know more than most because of my historical fiction: I know in theory how to take wool from the back of a sheep to a finished jumper, but would probably crash and burn if I ever had to do it in reality.
It was the opposite in the 16th century. Most people worked with reality, unless they were aristos or bureaucrats. Servants were essential; slaves were thought to be essential in the 17th and 18th centuries. 99% of people were lower class or worse and had to do almost everything with their muscles or their animals’ muscles.
