Virginia Postrel, author of "The Fabric of Civilization", explores how textiles shape human history and technology. She delves into the unseen connections between fabric innovation and technological advancements throughout history. The conversation highlights how textiles influence commerce, mathematics, and even early computing. Postrel also examines modern knitting techniques and the environmental implications of dyeing practices. Ultimately, she portrays textiles as a vital part of cultural identity and storytelling across civilizations.
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insights INSIGHT
Disappearing Technologies
The most profound technologies are those that disappear, becoming integral to everyday life.
Textiles, like ubiquitous computing, exemplify this by being so essential we rarely notice them.
insights INSIGHT
Textile Amnesia
We experience "textile amnesia" due to the abundance of textiles in modern life.
This parallels how technology becomes invisible as it becomes cheaper and more readily available.
insights INSIGHT
Revolutions of Fiber and Food
The agricultural revolution was as much about fiber as it was about food.
The industrial revolution significantly reduced the cost of textiles, similar to how technology costs decrease today.
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The Fabric of Civilization delves into the history and global effects of fabric-making, dyeing, the clothing trade, and other textile-related activities. The book covers topics such as the origins of string and fabric, the value of purple in the Roman Empire, the importance of fabrics for armies and warships, the development of weaving, and the role of textile merchants in modern political economy. It also discusses historical espionage related to textiles, such as Spain's monopoly on vibrant reds and French efforts to steal Indian indigo. The book is divided into sections on fiber, thread, cloth, dye, traders, consumers, and innovators, providing a detailed and academic treatment of the subject.
Longtime podcast showrunner (2014-2022), primary host, and editor Sonal Chokshi shares three best-of episodes as she shifts gears and the show goes on hiatus until relaunched with a new host.
The third of these three special rerun episodes is a conversation that originally took place in October 2020, in the midst of the pandemic – and perfectly captures the signature identity of this show until now, and Chokshi's work, which is at the intersection of technology and humanity. In it, she and Virginia Postrel, author of the book The Fabric of Civilization: How Textiles Made the World cover everything from science and math across several fields, to commerce to management & measurement, to the always-meta narrative of HOW innovation happens…
As a reminder: the a16z marketing & Future team will be putting this feed on hiatus while they relaunch it with a new host; in the meantime, you can continue to follow Sonal's work both here at a16z and other projects on Twitter @smc90. Thank you as well to our brilliant audio editors, expert guests, and several others here -- but most of all, thank you to YOU: for listening, sharing, engaging, and coming along with us on this journey the past decade! Stay tuned for more.
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