Smaller Faster Lighter Denser Cheaper: How Innovation Keeps Proving the Catastrophists Wrong

by Robert Bryce

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 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 .

Genres: Nonfiction, Business, Economics, Politics, Technology, Science, History

400 pages, Paperback

First published May 13, 2014

About the author

Robert Bryce has written three books, his newest being Gusher of Lies: The Dangerous Delusions of Energy Independence. He was hailed as a 'visionary' by the New York Times, a fact he often repeats to his children and his dog, Biscuit.

Reviews

[Amora · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bryce’s contention here is simple: human ingenuity is making things smaller, faster, lighter, cheaper, and denser and as a result humanity is improving and so is the environment. By making our energy resources denser, we are paving the way towards a cleaner environmental in which natural gas and nuclear energy are used the most. Bryce debunks many of the myths surrounding fracking, nuclear energy, and green energy throughout the book and shows that our future is N2N. Readers of this book will also enjoy reading his previous book, Power Hungry

[Jim Kahn · Rating 1 out of 5]

For full disclosure, I fall firmly into the camp against which the thesis of this book is firmly opposed; that is, I am pessimistic about the future of our high energy, high consumption society. When I picked up this book, I did not truly expect it to change my philosophical outlook, but I did hope to gain a better appreciation for the alternative perspective. I was wrong.

At its core, this book is nothing more than a shallow history of a few technologies (engines, computing, fossil fuel extraction) and how they got better over time. Not exactly a profound conclusion. During these histories, the author takes repetitive cheap pot shots at what he apparently perceives to be the enemy of progress, the "Green Left." I think that the point of the author is that since technologies have gotten better over time, that they will continue to do so indefinitely. But he never presents any sort of analysis to support this extrapolation.

The author does do a good job of discussing many of the legitimate issues with "Green" technology; basically that it is reliant on government subsidies and that there is no realistic way to scale up to the needs of current consumption. But here he makes two huge mistakes: he completely neglects the negative externalities imposed by conventional energy and technology in the form of pollution, rising sea levels, etc. Basically, he neglects to account for the true cost of conventional technology. And finally, he makes the assumption that current consumption levels per capita are not just acceptable, but should be increased. This is ludicrous beyond the point of arguing against.

And finally, my biggest issue with this book is his take on agriculture, which is my personal passion. The author lauds industrial agriculture and completely ignores the fact that it is entirely reliant on government subsidies, that it is horribly degrading to the environment, inhumane, unsafe, and provides a nutritionally deficient product. He presents completely false arguments about industrial monoculture crops being more productive than small scale organic polyculture. He does this by cherry picking facts and making broad, vague statements, presumably to satisfy his generally conservative audience.

I'm not sure what is more depressing - that I spent my time reading this, or that it has so many positive reviews here.

[Nancy · Rating 1 out of 5]

The blurb on the front flap of the paper cover of Smaller Faster Lighter Denser Cheaper alleges that inside Robert Bryce, “shows how innovation and the inexorable human desire to make things Smaller Faster Light Denser Cheaper… is fostering unprecedented prosperity, greater liberty, and, yes, better environmental protection.” It sounds too good to be true. Who could resist finding out more about these things that allegedly promote wealth, freedom and a healthier world?

Inside, alluring words continue. Like an oratorically gifted minister, Bryce uses the words Smaller Faster Lighter Denser Cheaper as a refrain, sometimes repeating only two or three of them, sometimes using all five. His ideas are superficially logical, and his optimism as alluring as his rhetoric… excerpt for his occasional, unattractive, ideologically rigid rants about those with ideas different from his. This combination of allure and rigidity makes Bryce’s book truly frightening. Its seductiveness may entice many more to believe what he espouses—a religion whose gods are innovation and business profitability and a devil that is anyone who wants to preserve natural ecosystems.

Bryce joyfully celebrates the United States of America’s having the highest population increase of any developed country. (Reviewer’s note: Our population growth is primarily through immigration, legal and otherwise.) He states without offering any justification that increasing population stimulates innovation, a proposition that may be true only in the area of food productivity. He also celebrates our increasing energy efficiency and energy density, and sees no contradiction in the fact that our output of carbon dioxide continues to increase. Could it be because of our increasing population? He enthuses about increasing wealth and economic growth creating more jobs, but seems to miss that we have far more hungry children now than 30 years ago in America and a far higher percentage of poor people compared to the number of rich people.

About two pages before his book ends, Bryce reveals his core beliefs: “There’s no question that we humans have changed the face of the planet. And we will continue changing it. Some species will disappear and many of these extinctions will be due to human blundering. Parts of paradise will be paved. But we cannot forsake human creativity, economic productivity, and our efforts to end hunger and poverty*, in the hope that doing so will magically restore the planet’s ecological systems.”

I can only hope that people smart enough to read this book can see through the author’s political biases, overlooked facts, and poor logic to see the diminished world that would result from many people’s rigidly adopting his ideas. For me, the really disappointing thing about the book is that I might have learned a lot from an objective, thoughtful analysis of various recent innovations in technology and energy production.


*Remember that hunger and poverty are actually increasing in the USA in recent years.

[Ryan Rommann · Rating 1 out of 5]

Bryce makes a compelling argument that things are becoming "smaller, faster, lighter, denser, cheaper" ..... right up until the point he gets to technologies he doesn't like. Then he shockingly disregards his argument in the first two hundred pages and starts comparing long-term projections of green energies based on current efficiencies. I don't think I have ever encountered such a glaring contradiction.

[L.A. Starks · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the clearest and most accessible books around on the subject of technology generally and energy specifically. This is an exceptional text for adults who want to understand why certain technologies succeed. Where necessary, Bryce explains the math and physics behind our economic preferences with descriptions that require little more than arithmetic (no calculus).

If you read only one nonfiction book this year, Smaller, Faster, Lighter, Denser, Cheaper should be the one.

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mr. Bryce’s new effort, previous books include – Power Hungry, Gusher of Lies, and Pipe Dreams, amongst others, is concerned with “a celebration of the trend toward Smaller Faster Lighter Denser Cheaper. It’s also a rejoinder to the doomsayers, a rebuttal to the catastrophists who insist that disaster lurks just around the corner.” [Loc. 394]. The author does not wish to suggest there are not problems which need to faced and dealt with, some of these very serious, but the book argues that our future does not lie in our past. That is to say, the future does not lie in forsaking hydrocarbons but in the smarter use of these; the more effective use of these. Hence the title, “Smaller Faster Lighter Denser Cheaper.”

A part of Robert Bryce’s answer lies in the belief, well founded belief, “we need to embrace the ingenuity and entrepreneurial spirit that is continually making things Smaller Faster Lighter Denser Cheaper [Loc.408]. If there is a bias in this book it is towards a recognition rather than an ideology: “we must recognize the countless Smaller Faster Lighter Denser Cheaper technologies that have come before us as well as those that lie ahead” [Loc. 427].

This book places a great deal of emphasis on energy and power systems. By looking into the past and then dealing with the present the author attempts to point the way to the future that is sustainable without having to forego technology and return to a hunter-gather state.

The book is profoundly hostile to Luddites and left-leaning environmentalists. There are also several occasions where Mr. Bryce lambasts the Obama presidency. To be honest, the book would have been stronger without the partisanship. Also, the book firmly falls into the camp of small government but is in no way connected with the idiocies of the Tea Party, or the demented state of the American Congress—they also come in for some contemptuous criticism.

Mr. Bryce breaks his argument down into four parts:

1. The push for innovation, its consequences, and an analysis of the neo-malthusian de-growth agenda of the left wing environmentalists.

2. This part of the argument is largely historical – dealing with where we have been and how the innovations of the past have helped us. Robert Bryce also examines where we are going and the companies leading the way.

3. Smaller examines the need for cheaper energy and how market demand has been pushing innovation forward which has led to Smaller Faster Lighter Denser Cheaper.

4. Part four looks at how and why we must embrace not a de-growth strategy but a smaller faster future…the more intelligent use of hydrocarbons that will reduce carbon emissions. As the author argues, “we must move past fear of technology to an understanding that technology isn’t the problem; it’s the solution” [Loc. 4800].

The fundamental argument of the book is that the solution to our problems is not in renouncing technology but in making is more efficient and thereby greener – two energy sources Bryce believes have merit is Natural Gas and Nuclear Power…rather than renewables, solar, and wind.

It is a very interesting book and worth the time of everyone interested in the future.

5 out of 5 stars.

[Keldin · Rating 4 out of 5]

I wanted to give this book a bad rating. But then I realized that no one will care why I gave it a bad rating, and simply assume that a bad rating equals disagreement. Well, I actually don't disagree with most of Robert Bryce's conclusions, and I'm not going to stop people from making said assumption, so I'm giving it a four star rating.

If you're interested, here's the rub:
1) The book is poorly written. I very much liked the slap-dash prose. Even so, some paragraphs seemed irrelevant.

2) While I agree with most of Bryce's conclusions, the arguments used to get there struck me as frequently incomplete, misleading, or wrong. I expect fewer anecdotes, and less name calling and derision. No one who believes that wind power can replace nuclear is going to be convinced when the book calls them delusional (paraphrasing). And even if advocates of a renewables-only approach to energy are not the target audience, I think we gain nothing by polarizing those who are currently ambivalent.

I know nothing about convincing lay-people, so I'll close by recognizing the distinct possibility that Bryce just knows better than I do. Maybe a well-reasoned argument—–employing only statistics as evidence and giving ample consideration to the contrary position——would fall on deaf ears.

[Ben · Rating 1 out of 5]

Oh boy. What is strange about this book is that the author provides the logic for so many counterexamples to his own argument as part of his argument. For example, the author talks about how horses were once the main source of power and that we were limited by how much grain could be grown to supply them with food. Innovation removed the food bottleneck by replacing the horses with water wheels and steam power and kicked off the industrial revolution. This is exactly analogous to our current dependency on fossil fuels (previously horses) being limited by the externalized cost of the impact that they are having on the environment (previously farming grain). However, somehow, by the authors own logic we should be investing in innovating away from fossil fuels to limit that damage - but he characterizes this as economic suicide and anti-growth. Divesting horses was only anti-growth for horses.

He gives an (now unfortunate) example of how absurd it was for Apple to plan to be net-zero carbon impact because of how much land it would have taken to do that in May 2014. Today, 6 years later in October 2020 Apple has already achieved that goal - basically because of ‘smaller, faster, lighter, denser, cheaper’ innovation and investment. Which his 'innovation always wins' argument should have predicted.

The lack of consistency appears to be politically motivated.

Secondly, the argument that innovation will always win the race between our problems and technology requires looking at both sides of the equation for each problem. Merely listing times in the past when innovation won the race is not a complete argument. Innovation did not prevent WWII for example. Innovation might cure cancer in the future but it did not get there fast enough for everyone who has already died from it. Past innovations did not prevent the current pandemic. It’s wishful thinking to think we will cure cancer without continued focus on it.

Just because innovation exists does not mean we should write off and discontinue looking at our problems - especially races that we are currently losing. Investing our attention and resources on problems is what creates the very innovation to mitigate them.

[Kevin Hanks · Rating 5 out of 5]

This author writes with a VERY optimistic view of the future, which I took in like a breathe of fresh air. His basic thesis is that we humans are innovative animals and that we are constantly finding ways to make things [insert title of book here]. I personally love the topic and was absolutely fascinated by some of the evidence he produced. For example, take the amount of food produced on an acre of land in the United States now compared to 500 years ago, and the amount of grain that a modern grain mill can process versus a water wheel powered one from the middle-ages, and you can see why such a small portion of our population can feed the billions of people on the planet. It's absolutely fascinating. The author focuses a huge portion of his book on the energy sector, and dives into the modern energy debate, calling to task the radical environmentalists (he calls "catastrophists") who use fear to push an agenda he claims is unsubstantial and extreme. It's hard to argue with much of his data, and he (refreshingly) uses numbers, physics, and science to back up his arguments. My favorite new unit of measurement is "Power Density", or the amount of power (Watts) that can be produced for a given mass (kg). Humans have been getting better and better at producing and doing more with less, a trend the author argues will continue... and I very optimistically agree!

[Paul · Rating 2 out of 5]

Despite the fact that I more or less agree with the general thrust of most of this book, I did not care for it at all. It had a lot of the hallmarks of some sort of politically motivated reasoning (e.g. using "gravimetric power density" - without really explaining what that is - a measure I have never heard of). He also seems perfectly fine poking holes in the arguments of environmentalists, but also propagating the rosy projections of the PR arms of various companies. A lot of the fantastic things he talks about are basically "just around the corner" - keeping some skepticism about the bold claims from companies is journalism 101.

I also found it interesting that despite the general tone of the book, Bryce's standpoint is still fundamentally technocratic at heart. It seems to me that his issue isn't that the government is subsidizing various energy generation technologies as much as it is that they're subsidizing the wrong ones.

If you want to read a better book on roughly the same subject, Matt Ridley's The Rational Optimist and the many books it cites are a better starting point.

[Michael Kearney · Rating 1 out of 5]

Simply put this author is a pawn on the rich oil, gas, and nuke companies. He stated that we should get ready for the coming climate crisis by fortifying our cities. This would include the estimated
$20,000,000,000 flood gate to protect Manhattan Island. (p. 240) He knows that on-shore wind is going to become more efficient in the future but ignored this track completely! The man knows who writes his paychecks. Save yourself some time and pass on this one.

[Pete · Rating 4 out of 5]

Smaller Faster Lighter Denser Cheaper (2014) by Robert Bryce looks at how the world has continuously developed better energy sources that have enabled humanity to get richer, live longer and be far more comfortable.

Bryce looks at how Malthusian collapse theories have become more entrenched despite failing dramatically and repeatedly over the past 200 years. Bryce puts this down to the drive for making things as described by his headline.

A similar story has also been described by Matt Ridley's excellent 'The Rational Optimist''. Bryce focuses on how energy use and creation and has changed and how people also travel faster and trade more.

In the book Bryce looks at 'Degrowth'. This is the theory that many mainstream environmentalists hold, namely that there needs to be dramatically fewer people and that they must be poorer or there will be a catastrophe for humanity and the planet. It's remarkable how this isn't a fringe movement but something that senior, influential, fairly mainstream environmentalists like John Holdren and William McKibben clearly state.

The books study of history is fascinating. The importance of the roller cone drill to dramatically expanding oil extraction is something few people know about. The importance of the Diesel and the Turbine is something more people are aware of but is nonetheless well outlined in the book. The way that commodities have declined in price is remarkable.

Bryce's picture of the future isn't quite as well done. He extrapolates the trends of the past 200 years which isn't unreasonable but does overlook places where there has been little improvement such as the cost of putting a kilogram in orbit. Perhaps the improvements to technology are not exponential but instead sigmoidal. Surprisingly in his assessment of nuclear technology Bryce omits a discussion of the myriad of potential new fusion possibilities.

[Justin Garrison · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book was not at all what I expected. I suppose I should have taken a hint that it would be more political than technology driven but I thought it would have better rounded examples of technology advancements.
If you took out all of the superfluous numbers/calculations, political bashing, and constant repeating of the phrase "smaller faster lighter denser cheaper" I'm not even sure what would be in this book. All I can think of is a couple references to "technology" getting better. e.g. Did you know a jet airplane is faster and more efficient than the Wright brothers' flying machine? Here's 10 pages on calculations why.
The author also frequently praises advances in "old" energy technologies (coal, oil, etc.) and never talks about how solar, wind, hydro, etc has made any advances. Most calculations are under the assumption that "green" energy will stay stagnant (not getting smaller, faster, lighter, denser, or cehaper) and the energy he is promoting will continue to advance at the same pace.
If you want to read a book about why the green party is stupid and follow along with (mostly) pointless calculations this is the book for you.

[Jansyn · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book is very polarizing: pro-business, pro-innovation, pro-technology; anti-small-scale-local anything. The author's aggressiveness and lack of empathy forced me to stop reading after 50 pages, although I continued to skim, just to get a grasp of the whole argument. He is spiteful and insulting towards environmentalists. He strongly believes in one value-system, and completely trashes other value-systems. He fails to see things as interconnected systems and connected webs with spillover costs. It's good for environmentalists to see how they are perceived by others, and had his tone been different, perhaps Bobby Bryce would have had a more receptive audience to digest his criticisms.

Also #precautionaryprinciple.

[Charles Haywood · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pretty good, in that it debunks easily debunked silly fever dreams like biofuels and wind energy, showing that they're totally useless if the goal is relaxing coal and oil. But repetitive and somewhat superficial, and relies on cites to things like websites. Not that those are necessarily wrong, but it comes across as not as deeply researched as is probably necessary to be as optimistic as the author is.

[Ajay · Rating 1 out of 5]

The book starts with an unproven premise and sites repetitive examples to support its claim. While there were some interesting content, I was not impressed with Robert Bryce's overwhelming optimism that seems based on personal opinion.

[David Ferreira Alves · Rating 1 out of 5]

Very poor book. Using the arguments with which tried to destroy different way of thinking to his own favour.
Very ultra conservative and stupid.

[Aaron Schmidt · Rating 3 out of 5]

The main thing I liked about this book was that it presented ideas that run a bit contrary to my own and then argued their case. Specifically, about energy policy and fuel sources. The book argues that oil and coal are here to stay. Anyone who says otherwise is ignoring the harsh reality of scale.

The book talks about how our demands for electricity are going to continue to grow in the developed nations, and likely to skyrocket in the developing world. To meet this demand we must adopt the most efficient, or cheap, sources of power. One metric that is used throughout the book is the concept of power density, or how much space is required to generate X amount of power.

Using this concept, the author then presents a whole slew of calculations that are hard to ignore. One example that is presented is if we wanted to replace coal overnight in the US we would need to set up a wind farm about the size of Italy. Effectively showing that wind power can never scale to meet the burgeoning demands of the world, developed or developing. He then describes how biofuels have a power density of about a third of wind power - making them an even worse source of power.

According to the author, the fuels of the future are nuclear and natural gas. As these fuels have a high power density and will be able to scale to meet the ever-increasing demand. His primary argument against conventional "green" energy sources (wind, tide, solar...etc) are that they just too inefficient to scale.

Don't get me wrong, the book had its issues. Some of the arguments against some green policy groups were a little redundant. The takeaway I got was that, and I could be wrong, was that some environmental groups on the far promote policies that are not realistic and damage progress. I tend not to give much credence to the viewpoints of most extremist groups (really far right, or left) and thought that attacking them in the narrative a little damaging to his points. The author also jumped around a lot throughout the book when he was discussing the history of innovation and trying to prove that more innovation is the solution.

One of the main things I see wrong with the world today is that people tend to only seek out information that supports their own opinion and discard anything that doesn't (confirmation bias). So being exposed to a different side of this issue was pretty neat. I don't necessarily agree with the author, but I enjoyed hearing his arguments. This book was a good illustration that almost all topics are much more nuanced then most people give them credit for.

[SeaShore · Rating 5 out of 5]

Robert Bryce---born 1960
Book published 2014 ---- Before the Coronavirus lockdown.
***The brain has greater power density than the Sun
***Sir Francis Bacon 1561 - 1626 -----Father of the Scientific method, named the printing press, gunpowder and the compass the most important inventions of his time.
***The printing press developed in about 1440 by Johannes Gutenberg (b 1398 d 1468) -Bryce feels it is the #1 invention -it allowed books to be Smaller Faster Lighter Cheaper. He has an 1899 photo insert.
***Cheaper books allowed common people to access knowledge.
***Lee De Forest not as important as Edison but he corralled the Vacuum Tube aiding us humans to understand electrons and consequently fostered the enhancement of creative people like Buddy Holly, Chuck Berry, Jimi Hendrix, Bob Marley. De Forest invented the triode vacuum in 1906. Photo inserted.
***How important were these electrons and triode vacuum to the Electric Bass and he success of artists like The Beatles, Bruce Springsteen and millions of others. Dynamic musicians
***Mikhail Kalashnikov made killing Cheaper. Photo of AK-47 inserted.
***What is the Haber-Bosch process. Fritz Haber and Karl Bosch is important to the making of Nitrogen fertilizer.
***Who is the father of The Green Revolution.
***Diesel Engines and Gas Turbines -the History. Who was Rudolph Diesel (b. 1858).
*** now, we take jet travel for granted. On an average day in 2011, some 7.6 Billion people boarded Commercial Airliners.
*** How did the invention of the telescope and microscope impact our knowledge of the Milky way and the Universe. 1637 photo inserted. Galileo Galilei and Antoni van Leeuwenhoek!
***He has a 1943photo insert of three students using a microscope at a lab at the Bethune-Cookman college.
***1882 Thomas Edison.
***2013 Maria Van Der Hoeven -contributions.
***Model T Ford 1908
***Fast Forward to Intel Corporations - How small can you get!
***Online Learning ---The BEST!!! He lists Five Leaders---- Free with credit or very inexpensive.

This a good book resource for a High School student and above... Compact and loaded with lots of information -also for the History enthusiast -anyone, actually.

[Wojtek Ogrodowczyk · Rating 1 out of 5]

I'm not surprised he wrote a book called "Gusher of Lies: The Dangerous Delusions…", because he seems to have very strong experience in the subject. This book is insanely stupid, but unfortunately also harmful, so I'll spend a minute to list its biggest points:

* Humans have invented the printing press and airplane. And it was good.
* We should not worry about climate change, because humans are smart and they've invented things before. Surely, somebody will come up with something in time.
* People who say we should rethink the society structure and what's important to us be damned. Instead, we should build more and buy more, that's the only way forward.
* Without capitalism there's no innovation, we wouldn't have created such things like wheel, writing, and irrigation.
* Remember what I said about human innovation? That doesn't apply to green energy. It will never get cheaper, lighter, or more efficient. If you wanted to use wind power you'd have to cover the whole Earth with wind turbines. Especially you old grandmother's house.
* The future of energy and humanity is gas, coal, and oil and there's no way around it. Fossil fuels are here to stay (until we burn them all) and we should embrace them and walk towards humanity's bright (scorching hot) future.

As you see, probably the biggest value of the book is how insanely stupid opinions were pumped out by the big oil lobby. Of course, the book is almost ten years old and times have changed, but it doesn't mean the big oil gave up, just became more subtle (and probably doubled their funding).

[Mike · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was not the book I was hoping it would be. A few years back, I read a book called Abundance: The Future Is Better Than You Think that was what this book could have been - an optimist's review of the game-changing technology that is on the cusp of making the world a better place for everyone. Instead, this book is a light review of meaningful technological innovations in the past followed by a screed against "the Left" and "alarmists". While I also believe in the power of human ingenuity to solve any problem (and have been known to roll my eyes at people who have the hubris to think that they'd be important enough to live through the end of our civilization), the tone of the back half of this book was less "look at what these brilliant folks are doing" and more "let's talk about what those idiots think and why they're dumb for thinking it". And that's just no fun.

[Kursad Albayraktaroglu · Rating 4 out of 5]

A quick look at the existing reviews of this book clearly shows how polarizing the subject of this book is. The author presents an optimistic view of the future of our planet by demonstrating how we have been able to overcome numerous technological challenges by relentless innovation. While I tend to agree with the author and firmly believe that we will be able to invent our way out of the numerous threats and challenges we are facing, this is not a very popular view. The author criticizes several "green" movements in the book, which seems to have enraged many readers.

Polarizing subject aside, the book is highly interesting and informative. It is not as comprehensive or as deep as Matt Ridley's "The Rational Optimist", but it would be a good book for anyone who would like to read about a positive view of our planet's future.

[Richfield Branch · Rating 4 out of 5]

I should have read the description more closely. I thought this was a design thinking book on the concept of lighter-faster-quicker, a how-to. I thought it would walk you through the steps to further your ideas if you need to scale smaller and cheaper (with examples on how SFLDC was applied), which is what libraries are asked to do all the time.

Instead, it is a book about the people who made things smaller and denser, lighter and faster. We are creative and innovative, if allowed to be so, and Bryce demonstrates with history lessons of innovative progress from farming to making batteries. Bryce adds that the doom and gloom we live under, how we are destroying the environment and what-not is not helpful, in that it causes "collapse-anxiety". What needs to be shown is how much we are working towards making things better.

[Justin Blount · Rating 1 out of 5]

-nice premise of a book, not the best execution. An overview of e past few centuries of certain technologies. The final 3rd of the book decries the push for renewable energy in favor of coal and oil - the author sounds like a lobbyist more than a fact-focused disinterested observer on that count. In the ending summary he declares his preference for economic development over concern for the trade offs involving ecological concerns. After being a proponent of the adjectives in the title of the book for all other technologies, on the topic of fuel and energy he rants for a while supporting coal and oil with only negative consideration for wind and solar. Except for nuclear, he gives no insight or fore-vision of what emerging technologies may replace coal and oil. In my opinion this is a shallow book, not worth revisiting.

[Gina · Rating 3 out of 5]

10% of the book is the author repeating the phrase "Smaller Faster Lighter Denser Cheaper". It didn't need to be repeated that often. The book covers some interesting topics but there's nothing holding it together. It's very randomly put together and you jump from topic to topic with no rhyme or reason for the order and flow. The author has a clear stance and declares anyone concerned about finite resources as alarmists. It seems like a short-sighted viewpoint not to mention reckless to advise people to continue to consume with abandon as innovation will always save us.

[TheQueensBooksII · Rating 4 out of 5]

I like the overview this book gives of many different and diverse areas of technological improvement. Bryce repeatedly proves that technological improvement improves the quality of life for more people in more places in more ways than we generally realize. He spends probably a bit more time than necessary on the history of doping in the Tour de France (yes, that has to do with faster & lighter, too! ...), but generally the anecdotes accompanying his research are intriguing. It's a page-turner, in spite of the seemingly dry subject matter. Highly recommend.

[L · Rating 3 out of 5]

I can't comment on the validity of his arguments but this book did give me a different approach to think about things. The first half focuses on different technology in innovation and the second half is all about energy.

[Bob Costello · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good window in to the future. Innovation is the key to the future. Innovation keeps proving the catastrophists wrong. The future of energy is natural gas and nuclear. Wind and solar are not the future.

[Robert · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent review of the state of the US and the World's search for the sufficient and most cost-effective source of electricity. Bob should be nominated to the President's Energy Council, and listened to... so much to learn, and yet, the math and science make much of the learning VERY easy.

[Richard · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was not what I thought it was but it was still pretty informative.