The Material World is the bedrock of our lives today, sparing most of us from the hard work and drudgery of our ancestors. Back in 1801 it took us, on average, 150 hours of human labour to produce a hectare of wheat; today, thanks to steel ploughs, diesel engines and semiconductors guiding combine harvesters, it takes us less than 2 hours—and we pack much more wheat into each hectare. A century ago it took 230 hours of human labour to produce a tonne of copper; today it takes about 18. These astonishing (and for the most part unappreciated) leaps came about because we deployed enormous amounts
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