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Charles C. Mann

Charles C. Mann Biography

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“When I last spoke to Borlaug, a few years before he passed away, I asked him about the past criticisms. Critics, he said, never wanted to answer the counterfactual question: Where would the world be today if we had the same growth in population and affluence but none of the yield increases of the Green Revolution? Overuse of fertilizer, water-logging soils, loading up land with toxic salts from badly run irrigation schemes—these were real issues, he said. But wouldn't you rather have these for problems than the kind of hunger we had in 1968? He asked me if I had ever been to a place where most of the people weren't getting enough to eat. "Not just poor, but actually hungry all the time," he said. I told him that I hadn't been to such a place. "That's the point," he said. "When I was getting started, you couldn't avoid them.”

ScienceEnvironmentGreen Revolution
Book:The Wizard and the Prophet: Two Remarkable Scientists and Their Dueling Visions to Shape Tomorrow's World
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“Look, the basic facts are obvious," he said. "You can't keep growing forever on a finite planet---there are limits." But the exact relations among economic growth, environmental destruction, and planetary limits no longer seemed so obvious to me.”

ScienceEconomic GrowthEnvironmentalism
Book:The Wizard and the Prophet: Two Remarkable Scientists and Their Dueling Visions to Shape Tomorrow's World
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“Major power and telephone grids have long been controlled by computer networks, but now similar systems are embedded in such mundane objects as electric meters, alarm clocks, home refrigerators and thermostats, video cameras, bathroom scales, and Christmas-tree lights - all of which are, or soon will be, accessible remotely.”

LongHomeLightTreeObjectsComputerMajorsCamerasScalesVideoClockControlledElectricTelephonesBathroomMundaneAlarmsEmbeddedMeterRefrigeratorsGridsChristmas TreeAlarm ClocksVideo Cameras
Author:Charles C. Mann
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“A smartphone links patients' bodies and doctors' computers, which in turn are connected to the Internet, which in turn is connected to any smartphone anywhere. The new devices could put the management of an individual's internal organs in the hands of every hacker, online scammer, and digital vandal on Earth.”

BodyHandsEarthTurnsIndividualInternetComputerDoctorsManagementPatientConnectedInternalsDigitalOnlineDevicesLinksOrgansHackersSmartphonesVandals
Author:Charles C. Mann
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“In 1491 the Inka ruled the greatest empire on earth. Bigger than Ming Dynasty China, bigger than Ivan the Great’s expanding Russia, bigger than Songhay in the Sahel or powerful Great Zimbabwe in the West Africa tablelands, bigger than the cresting Ottoman Empire, bigger than the Triple Alliance (as the Aztec empire is more precisely known), bigger by far than any European state, the Inka dominion extended over a staggering thirty-two degrees of latitude—as if a single power held sway from St. Petersburg to Cairo.”

IfsTwoStatesEarthPowerfulKnownDegreesBiggerWestChinaRussiaThirtyEmpiresExpandingAlliancesDominionStaggeringZimbabweDynastyLatitudeWest AfricaCairoOttomansOttoman EmpireAztec
Book:1491 (Second Edition): New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus
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