While many interests are at work, one of the players that benefit the most from this story is the media: the notion of "extreme" climate simply makes for more compelling news.
Personal technology is indeed more engaging than ever, and there's no doubt companies are engineering their products and services to be more compelling and attractive.
People are absorbed into a "culture of consumption" launched by the 19th-century department stores that offered "vast arrays of goods in an elegant atmosphere".
If a Chinese brand could attract these people, it could cause a huge ripple effect among the Big Three and the Japanese manufacturers selling in the USA.
By then, he explained, the first factory was already producing more for villagers’ pockets than their fields were, so the idea of turning to industry was appealing even to tradition-minded farmers.