Economics, Efficiency and Invisibility in Industrial Capitalism To appreciate possibilities for a more ecological and developmental use of materials, we must understand the role of materials within the industrial economy over the past 200 years, particularly their relationship to labour, to information and science, and to the satisfaction of human need. As Richta et al (1969) have shown, the industrial revolution was initially far more economic and technological than scientific, marked by a fantastic mobilization of resources and a particular organization/simplification of the labour process. This technological mobilization was made possible by an economic revolution which turned the means of production into forms of capital, making the accumulation of money virtually synonymous with technological revolutionand vice versa. The permanent