Inorganic Organism

In his book Material World, Ed Conway suggests an analogy modern-man-made physical structures today and a living organism. “If steel provides the skeleton of our world and concrete its flesh then copper is civilisation’s nervous system, the circuitry and cables we never see but couldn’t function without.” And what gives these structures life comes from harnessing the long-dead. Black gold, or “[crude] oil is the food that sustains… it provides us with energy, with the chemicals from which we make the fertilisers that keep [us] alive.” Most of our electricity is generated by pumping out hydrocarbons from the bowels of the Earth, just as we have dug iron, copper, gold and other “precious” metals through mining – creating huge pits in the ground.

 

I learned that the quality of iron is dependent on how much carbon is present. To make ultra strong steel, “too much carbon and the structure of the lattice is easily imperfect, so the metal can easily shatter. Too little and the iron atoms slide over each other without much resistance.” But before modern science understood this, there were protocols and recipes developed by trial and error. The Hittites may have won many battles with their superior weaponry. Conway tells the story of steel through agriculture and improvements made to the plough. Mao’s Great Leap disaster makes an appearance. The steelworks of Azovstal is also discussed, with its history and present woes amid battle with Russia today and with Germany’s Hitler in the past. I also learned that a byproduct of the steelworks was neon which resulted in Ukraine becoming a major producer of this noble gas!

 

It also turns out that since the Manhattan Project and the detonation of nuclear bombs, the atmosphere is contaminated by trace levels of radioactive isotopes. And because making steel requires “spraying oxygen (from the air) into the lava mix”, if you wanted to make something called low-background steel, you could only obtain it from sources pre-1945. Apparently, this is why old sunken battleships are a great source, the Perth (near Jawa) and the Repulse and Prince of Wales off the coast of Malaysia. I also learned that steel is quite recyclable. It’s mostly iron, and you can sort it easily because it’s magnetic. I learned that “more than two-thirds of America’s steel is now made from scrap… old skyscrapers and cars are reconstituted”.

 

The advent of electricity completely changed human life. Copper is a major contributor to this story, and I’m amazed at the ingenuity and perseverance of the scientists and engineers involved. Conway traces the history of mining starting with Cyprus (from where we get the name) to Rio Tinto to Sweden and to the huge hole in the ground in Chuquimata, Chile – “the mine that ate a town”. I was staggered reading the size of the mining operation and had to look up pictures on the internet. I would probably be overawed and aghast if I saw it physically in person with my own eyes. Conway spends some time discussing deep sea mining and polymetallic nodules and the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea. Coincidentally, I had just read about the Philippines and Vietnam’s applications to have its continental shelf extended, amidst squabbles with China over who has rights to what zones. And there’s the brazenness of copper thieves in major metropolitan areas of the U.S. Clearly the industrial hunger for this metal has not abated.

 

In the chapters on oil, Conway discusses the different varieties of crude oil (based on its sulfur content and density), the transition away from coal to oil, and the present transition to natural gas. And while there are many advances in renewable sources, making solar panels or wind turbines or better batteries; all these require energy. Lots of it. I agree with Conway that we will be using these fossil-fuel products for a long time to come, certainly in the near future. Unless perhaps there is a significant shift toward nuclear power. I learned a little about oil refineries (they’re a complex complex!) And Conway discusses the many byproducts of the petrochemical industry and the ubiquity of plastics. Inorganic materials give you a lot to play with, but organic materials open up the toolbox to make pretty much anything you can imagine.

 

Conway’s book is a great reminder that our way of life and technology sits upon the bedrock of a physical material world. And although the ethereal world of the Internet beckons for our attention, none of it can be sustained without the physical. If not for steel, copper, fibreglass, or plastics, we wouldn’t have the cloud services and apps and devices that we glue our eyes on. One wonders if we’ve become willing slaves to the feeding of a huge inorganic-organic structure known as the modern way of life with its air-conditioned server rooms filled with blinking lights and computer chips. Artificial intelligence, we call it. Let’s hope it doesn’t subvert our intelligence any further. Because it has a limitless appetite and we will keep digging the materials out of the ground to feed it.