Entropy and the cost of complexity in industrial production

Abstract

The building of an industrial society can be viewed as a process of self-organisation with a decrease in entropy in society and a corresponding increase of entropy through dissipation of energy into the environment. The process is driven by the “degradation” of high quality energy to low-quality heat as energy flows down potential gradients at the same time creating a favourable potential gradient driving the reaction. The post-industrial society is characterised by an increase in complexity, which can be monitored by the exergy consumption. Here a first attempt is made to relate the complexity of a number of products, as represented by the number of their functional parts, to their actual economic value.