[fao_]

This might seem rude or presumptuous, and I really don't mean to come across that way but I don't know another way to say it.

Go open a history book.

Seriously! Not enough people here, and (broadly) in computing circles, actually bother to obtain even basic undergraduate or pre-undergraduate knowledge about other fields, and yet they feel more than content to argue about a myriad of topics and to even form opinions and argue for them, based on this complete and utter lack of knowledge! There are too many people on this site and others arguing about, say, sociology, without even bothering to google about the topic, let alone opening up a sociology 101 textbook and skimming it, and it is blisteringly obvious (and extremely depressing) to people who have.

Any answer you have here can only be answered by someone who has studied the industrial revolution, anything else, and everything else, is pure conjecture. Unfortunately it won't be treated as such, because argument ex culo seems to be the norm for people inducted into computers or statistics.

A lot of the 'debates' here could be completely nullified (or raised to a higher level) if the people arguing about topics here actually took half an hour out of their day to read an introductory undergraduate text first, or even just opened up google and typed in their question first.