Global technological revolutions and the oil and gas industry

The broader impact of technological developments in society, industries and economies has been well documented and researched by authors including Kuznets, Schumpeter, Freeman, and Perez. Looking back, research by Perez shows that in the last 250 years, global economic growth and political changes have gone through five distinct stages associated with technological revolutions resulting from the synergistic interdependence of a group of industries and diffusion of technology. The five periods are: the industrial revolution (1770 to 1820), the age of steam and railways (1820 to 1870), the age of steel, electricity and heavy engineering (1870 to 1910), the age of oil, automobile and mass production (1910 to 1970) and the age of information technology from late 1970 to now. Each of these have lasted sixty years or so.