I saw this chart the other night in a history class I’m taking. No idea where it was sourced from but I found it more intriguing than the discussion going on.
There’s an awful lot of R/R track in Europe, Eastern US, India, Japan and Eastern China. Not much elsewhere. There are vast spaces of emptiness in northern Canada, northeastern Russia, northern and central Africa, Northern and southern South America. northern and central Australia, and others.
The question that comes to mind is why the open space. Yeah mountainous regions could present a problem but the Alps didn’t seem to inhibit R/R track laying in Europe. Tundra and deserts maybe a problem. But still South America, Upper Canada, Russia, elsewhere outside Africa don’t fit that pattern. Population density maybe but Africa and China don’t fit that pattern.
And then I thought there’s a technological change that happened during the 20th Century that made R/R not as necessary to economic development. Namely the advance of the automobile, tractor trailers, highways/roadways, etc. But these didn’t really take off until after the 1950s. Arguably there were at least 100yrs of R/R dominance in transportation that occurred between 1850 and 1950
Many of the open spaces were actively fought over. e.g. Africa, South America, Asia, etc. and attempts were made to develop them throughout the 19th century. But they still never got the density of railways that the advanced economies had. And what explains the less dense portions of USA from the higher density portions of the USA. And the discrepancy between India’s track density and the lack of density in mainland China.
Re the US, I can only think that subsidies ran dry after a while in the USA which curtailed R/R track construction. But the vast majority of track laid in the Eastern US was not subsidized by the government (IMHO) why so dense there.
I suppose timing could account for some of this variance. R/R track was laid to support transport of goods and people. The relative sparsity of population of the Western US (at least during 1850-1950) may have had an impact on the R/R track laid down.
I believe two main factors combine to dictate how that R/R track map looks today:
- The availability of capital for infrastructure development
- The economic need to support/improve transport to market for industrial goods and agriculture
But none of that tells us why China’s interior doesn’t have a dense R/R track network. My guess is that although the population, industry and (agricultural) production was high in China during 1850-1950, capital and a centralized authority to protect property was missing at the time.
Great Britain had the money (during 1850-1925, at least) and used it to develop the R/R network in India, but didn’t do the same in Australia why. Because the need wasn’t as great, because Australia didn’t have the population, agricultural production, industrial production of India, probably.
What does all this mean for AI
R/R technology was economically essential for much of the 100yrs between 1850-1950. If we assume that AI will fill a necessary economic niche 2020-?, as essential as the R/R, we should see similar developments driving how AI is deployed.
Ultimately, we should see AI data centers be deployed mainly in support of industrial and agricultural production and services in areas where capital is available and can be deployed. AI adoption will likely not occur or be deployed as much in areas that are less advanced economically, mainly because of lack of capital and legal infrastructure to protect it.
IMHO, AI and AI datacenter deployments will probably look similar to the R/R track map above with some minor changes. It will follow the money, economic need and legal structures needed to support it.
In today’s world, literally awash in capital searching for investment, capital shouldn’t be a limiting factor. And legal infrastructure protecting property is almost universal throughout the world these days.
However economic activity and the need to support it is widely variable and dispersed in today’s world. Some regions have migrated away from manufacturing to services, others have undergone a serious manufacturing build out, but all need agriculture to sustain populations.
All that may change the AI deployment maps from matching the R/R track map above a bit. As a result we may see a broader spread for AI deployments than R/R track of yesterday.
I believe the main deployments for AI data centers will be throughout the coasts of USA, with lots in the Eastern states, some in the midwest, lots in Europe, lots in China, India, Japan, Korea, Israel, Taiwan, and Australia/NZ maybe, with spots in South East Asia, spots in Africa, and spots in South America.
I suppose similar maps could be used to display electricity generation and transport, telephone lines, and fibre channel connections (tried that above but wasn’t as useful as I thought). If I’m correct they should all look similar to the above with minor changes based on when the technology was economically essential.
Comments?