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How could the world leapfrog the Industrial Revolution to the Post Industrial Revolution and go straight from 18thc Agriculture to 21stc computers and plastics, without the intervening century of Steel and Machinery? Or is that possible at all?

Just as one idea, could Franklin have anticipated Faraday in the development of electricity, and could Faraday have then anticipated Tesla and Maxwell anticipate Steinmetz? This gives us Radio and an electric grid by the 1840's and if we then skip what most tech historians now see as a 50 year sidetracking caused by the vacuum tube we get transistors at the same time; and this gives us IC's and computers by 1865.

The question is brought about by looking at Ireland, where a booming Information Age industry is supported by what a nice place Ireland remains in an environmental sense, largely because of draconian and oppressive English policies which tried to keep Ireland poor by forbidding most heavy industrial development.
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