Why hardware is hard — and how to fix it
The thinking behind Fractional Forge. Tristan Fischer writes at length on why building physical things is structurally harder than software, the return of manufacturing, and the physical economy underneath everything. A selection of his essays, on History Future Now.
The hardware thesis
Why building physical products is structurally harder than building software — and what the missing infrastructure layer looks like.
Hardware Needs Its AWS Moment
Software rents its infrastructure; hardware never could. Why that gap is the defining problem for physical-product founders.
The Eighteen-Month Trap
Why hardware startups lose a year and a half before they have built anything — and where that time actually goes.
The Fifteen-Minute Factory
Why proximity still wins in manufacturing, even in a globalised world.
The Arsenal and the Container
How shared infrastructure, from arsenals to shipping containers, always beats going it alone.
Platform Technologies
How the foundational technologies of the past tell you which platforms will define the future.
Making things again
The return of manufacturing to the West, why it left, and what it takes to build at home.
The Return of the State Factory
Why nations that forgot how to make things are urgently relearning.
The Great Offshoring
How the world's factory moved east — and what it cost.
The Ladder and the Lie
Why every great economy was built on tariffs, and free trade mostly serves whoever is already ahead.
Why Cheap Imports Cost More
The hidden price of buying cheap imported products, for individuals and for society.
Energy, materials and the physical economy
The atoms underneath everything — power, storage, critical minerals, food and water.
The Renewables and Battery Revolution
The shift reshaping power, and why storage sits at the centre of it.
The Atom Returns
Why the world's most feared energy source may be its best hope.
The New Oil
Why the race for critical minerals will define the 21st century.
Vertical Farming: The Electrical Convergence
Where power, transport and agriculture collide.
The Last Drop
Why every civilisation that ran out of water collapsed.
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