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THE ORIGINS OF EFFICIENCY
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How Long Do We Wait for New Inventions?
Mostly not very long
May 7
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Brian Potter
554
64
74
How an Oil Refinery Works
Though wind and solar continue to carve out larger and larger shares of world energy supply, the modern world still runs on petroleum, and will continue…
Apr 30
•
Brian Potter
394
3
23
Construction Costs Rarely Fall
Not long ago we looked at construction productivity trends for the US and for countries around the world. We found that in the U.S., and in most other…
Apr 23
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Brian Potter
172
18
13
Helium Is Hard to Replace
The war in Iran, and the subsequent closure of the Strait of Hormuz, has unfortunately made us all familiar with details of the petroleum supply chain…
Apr 9
•
Brian Potter
289
42
24
Information and Technological Evolution
I spend a lot of time reading about the nature of technological progress, and I’ve found that the literature on technology is somewhat uneven.
Apr 2
•
Brian Potter
159
22
11
The Age of the Amplifier
As we’ve noted more than a few times before, for most of the 20th century AT&T’s Bell Labs was the premier industrial research lab in the US.
Mar 27
•
Brian Potter
206
9
10
How Much Computing Power is in a Data Center?
Every day there’s some new story about the enormous amounts of investment in building AI data centers.
Mar 19
•
Brian Potter
160
18
6
The Elusive Cost Savings of the Prefabricated Home
It’s long been believed the constantly rising costs of new home construction, and lackluster improvements in construction productivity more generally…
Mar 12
•
Brian Potter
168
58
12
A History of Operation Breakthrough
Many who look at the high and rising cost of housing see the problem as fundamentally one of production methods; more specifically, that homes could be…
Mar 6
•
Brian Potter
143
39
7
Is the Future “AWS for Everything”?
A theme running through my book is the idea that efficiency improvements, and the various methods for making products cheaper over time, have…
Feb 19
•
Brian Potter
191
30
13
Trends in US Construction Productivity
(This is a chapter of a longer report I’m working on that summarizes and expands the last several years of my work on construction productivity.
Feb 12
•
Brian Potter
93
19
8
Do Commodities Get Cheaper Over Time?
This American Enterprise Institute chart, which breaks down how price changes for different types of goods and services in the consumer price index, has…
Jan 22
•
Brian Potter
131
45
14
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