Hans Rosling and the Magic Washing Machine

Hans Rosling states that the washing machine was indeed the greatest invention of the Industrial Revolution, enabling everything from economic development through electrical efficiency to intellectual growth by reallocating free time for reading.

An interesting parallel emerges when we examine Rosling’s talk in alongside Clay Shirky’s Cognitive Surplus: The washing machine is the antithesis of television, freeing up the same kind of “cognitive surplus” — excess human creative and intellectual energy — that, according to Shirky’s central argument, TV absorbed, a parallel that bespeaks the universal duality of innovation and the incredible potential of technology as a force of social change the polarity of which we get to choose.