AMSCO 9.1 Advances in Technology and Exchange Notes

Overview

AMSCO Topic 9.1, Advances in Technology and Exchange (p.633-637), covers how new technologies transformed the world from 1900 to the present, kicking off Unit 9 on globalization. The chapter traces four big threads: communication and transportation breakthroughs (radio, the internet, air travel, shipping containers), the Green Revolution in agriculture, new energy technologies (petroleum and nuclear power), and medical innovations (antibiotics, birth control, and vaccines). The unifying idea is that technology shrank geographic distance, raised productivity, and helped humans survive longer, which set up the interconnected world the rest of Unit 9 examines.

The chapter opens with a quote from writer Joseph Krutch that captures the theme in one line: "Technology made large populations possible; large populations now make technology indispensable."

Timeline of Technological and Medical Advancements (1900-2019). Image Courtesy of Riya

Communication and Transportation

New communication and transportation technologies reduced the problem of geographic distance. People, goods, and information could move farther and faster than ever before.

From radio to social media

• Starting in the early 1900s, radio brought news, music, and cultural events to a wide range of people. Decades before the internet, it was already connecting the world.
• The internet was first developed for the U.S. Defense Department during the Cold War. By the late 1990s it had become a regular communication tool for much of the public.
• By the 1990s, mobile technologies like cellphones put the tools of creating and spreading information into the hands of individuals everywhere.
• Social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook made media accessible to anyone, anywhere.

The effects showed up fast. Phone videos of police actions in the United States and other countries led to inquiries into racial profiling. Social media also helped fuel the Arab Spring, a series of antigovernment protests that spread across North Africa and the Middle East in the 2010s as people shared their protest experiences online.

One more ripple effect worth knowing: knowledge economies, economies based on developing and sharing information, took root in cities around the world.

Moving people and goods

Communication put people in virtual touch; transportation moved them into actual proximity.

• About 2 million people fly on an airplane every day, and cargo planes haul commercial shipments around the clock.
• Shipping containers are large, standard-sized units that can ride on a truck, a train, or stacked on a ship. That standardization made moving goods dramatically cheaper and easier.
• Giant tankers, some up to one-quarter mile long and loaded with thousands of containers, sail the seas in growing numbers. Some are too big to fit through the Panama Canal.

The Green Revolution

The Green Revolution was a mid-20th-century agricultural transformation that increased crop yields enough to feed the world's growing population, but it came with real costs for small farmers and the environment.

What changed

• Scientists developed new varieties of wheat, rice, and other grains with higher yields and greater resistance to pests, diseases, and drought.
• The first new varieties came from crossbreeding, which means breeding two varieties of a plant to create a hybrid.
• More recently, scientists turned to genetic engineering, manipulating a cell or organism to change its basic characteristics.
• Farmers also used more irrigation, fertilizers, and pesticides. In Brazil and elsewhere, people burned down forests and plowed the land for farming. Acreage devoted to crops, especially grains, increased dramatically worldwide.

The downsides

The Green Revolution solved a hunger problem and created new problems. For essays, this is a classic "evaluate the effects" setup.

• Many small farmers couldn't afford the new fertilizers or pesticides, so they couldn't compete with large landowners. Many were forced to sell their land, which made large holdings even larger.
• Mechanized equipment meant fewer jobs for farm laborers.
• Heavy chemical applications damaged the soil and the environment.
• Genetic engineering raised its own worries. A modification designed to make a plant insect-resistant might accidentally reduce populations of pollinating insects like bees, and old seed varieties were lost as genetically engineered plants took over.

Energy Technologies

Energy technologies, especially petroleum and nuclear power, raised productivity and increased the production of material goods. In 1900, coal accounted for about half of global energy consumption. As extraction, refinement, and transportation technologies improved, petroleum (crude oil) and natural gas joined coal in fueling industrial output.

• Research in the 1930s and 1940s that produced the atomic bomb also led to the first nuclear power plants, which generated electricity for factories and homes.
• Fossil fuels (coal, petroleum, and natural gas) are nonrenewable resources. Once used up, the supply is gone for good.
• Fossil fuels contribute to air pollution and to greenhouse gases, especially carbon dioxide, which let sunlight into the atmosphere but block Earth's heat from escaping.
• Nuclear power is considered clean energy, but accidents have leaked radiation, and storing nuclear waste is hazardous. Construction of nuclear plants declined starting in the 1980s, and nuclear power supplies only about 5 percent of global energy consumption.
• Renewable resources like wind and solar power are starting to supply energy to industries and homes, but they also account for only about 5 percent of global energy output.

The environmental fallout from these energy choices comes back in a big way in AMSCO 9.3 Technology and the Environment.

Medical Innovations

Medical innovations, including antibiotics, reliable birth control, and vaccines, increased human survival and longevity. The chapter highlights three breakthroughs.

Antibiotics

• In 1928, Scottish biologist Alexander Fleming accidentally discovered in his London lab that a fungus produced a substance that killed bacteria. He had discovered penicillin, the first antibiotic.
• During World War II, antibiotics saved soldiers who in any previous war would have died from minor infected wounds. After the war, antibiotics spread to civilian use against a range of illnesses.
• Fleming himself warned about overuse in his Nobel Prize speech. Killing off certain strains of a disease allows antibiotic-resistant strains to evolve, raising fears of renewed epidemics of diseases once under control.

Reliable birth control

• In the early 1950s, scientist Gregory Pincus developed the birth control pill, more reliable than the barrier methods then in use. After testing in the 1950s, the U.S. government approved it for widespread use in 1960.
• The pill and other forms of birth control gave women greater control over fertility. Fertility rates declined in much of the world, meaning the average woman had fewer babies than her mother or grandmother had.
• Birth control transformed sexual practices and helped reshape gender roles. By 2018, more than 300 million women worldwide were using modern contraception, including the pill.

Vaccines

• Vaccines have existed since 1796, but governments and nonprofits only began developing and widely distributing them after 1900.
• Thanks to vaccines, polio and measles became rare, and smallpox was eradicated by the 1980s. Vaccines also prevent mumps, tetanus, diphtheria, and whooping cough.
• As of 2019, a malaria vaccine was in the trial stage.
• The World Health Organization (WHO) estimated vaccines were preventing as many as 3 million deaths per year in the 21st century, and that better vaccination coverage would save another 1.5 million people annually. Some people couldn't get vaccinated because they lived in hard-to-reach areas.

Key Terms to Know

Practice and Next Steps

These notes pair with the Topic 9.1 Advances in Technology and Exchange study guide, which frames the same content the way the AP exam tests it. When you're ready, move on to AMSCO 9.2 Technological Advancements and Limitations, which looks at disease and warfare, or browse the full set of AMSCO notes for AP World.

To check your understanding, drill Unit 9 questions with guided practice, review definitions in the key terms glossary, or get writing reps in with FRQ practice and instant scoring.