Make: Technology on Your Time Volume 19

RETROSPECT

By George Dyson

Cottage Economy

Pamphleteer William Cobbett launched the sustainability movement — in 1821.

“The word Economy, like a great many others, has, in its application, been very much abused,” explained William Cobbett, the irrepressible British (and at times North American) radical agitator and pamphleteer, in the introduction to Cottage Economy.

Cobbett (1763–1835) was one of the leading social commentators of the post-Revolutionary period in England and the United States, when the business of today’s bloggers was conducted ...