Daniel Yergin

But there was no tech.

Nobody talked about tech.

It didn't exist.

Well, and, you know, now we talk about big tech the way people talk about big oil.

And you saw that in the 19th century.

I mean, that was one thing when I was writing about the beginning of the 20th century and the end of—

I mean, it's far away, and yet it felt contemporary because you saw a very similar pattern.

You saw booms and busts.

You saw trees that were going to grow to heaven and then fell apart.

And then those people who came in and either had resilience or picked things up and carried them forward.

Nothing to do with gasoline.

They were in... John D. Rockefeller was a lighting merchant because what they did is that they rolled back the darkness with kerosene, with lighting.

Mm-hmm.

Before that, the number one source of lighting, you know, candles and whaling.

You know, the whaling industry was delivering lighting.

And so the first 30 or 40 years of the oil industry was a lighting business.

and then comes along this other guy, this other guy named Thomas Edison, and suddenly you have electric lights, and you say, well, that's going to be the end of the oil business.

But by the way, over here is Henry Ford and others, and you're creating this whole new market in the 20th century for gasoline.

In the 19th century, gasoline was a waste product, like for three cents a gallon.

John D. Rockefeller became the richest man in the United States as a merchant of lighting, not as a merchant of mobility.