Whale Oil, AI, and the Future Focus of Cyber

There was a point in our history when the world ran on whale oil. It was used to lubricate machinery, provide lighting, and powered the industrial revolution.  Within the span of a few years that technology collapsed and was rapidly replaced by new tech. I believe we are seeing the beginning of a similar tectonic shift.

Long ago, indigenous people hunted whales for food, tools, and used the oil for heating and lighting. In the 1500s, Basque sailors from Spain and France  were some of the first Europeans to engage in commercial whaling, primarily in the Bay of Biscay. In the early 1600s the Dutch and English established whaling operations in Arctic regions like Svalbard and around 1672 colonists began using drift whales that washed ashore in New England.  In the 1700s whaling expanded to the deep-sea in the Atlantic and places like Nantucket and New Bedford Massachusetts became major centers of the whaling industry (the Silicon Valley of whaling so to speak).