“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” Then holds the third and most famous of “Three laws” Initially articulated by the science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke. Even when it was published for the first time in the late 1960s, Clarke's third law would have felt faithful to any resident of the developed world, surrounded and entirely dependent on advanced technologies which they could hardly hope for. Naturally, it seems even more true now, a quarter of the path in our digital 21st century. Indeed, for all that we know about the way they really work, our credit cards, our smartphones, our computers and, in fact, the Internet itself could just as well be magical.
To better understand the technology that is increasingly constituting our world, we must try to understand the evolution of this technology. These smartphones, for example, could not have been invented in the form that we know them without the previous developments of chemically reinforced glass, the multi-touch screen interface and the camera phone. Each of these individual technologies also has its predecessors: follow the chain enough, and finally you arrive at tastes of mobile radio, invented in 1946; The Phasé network antenna, invented in 1905; and glass, invented around 1500 BC. These paths and countless others can be traced The Historical Technological TreeAn ambitious writer and programmer project Etienne Fortier-Dubois.
Fortier-Dubois credits among his inspirations Sid Meier Civilization Games, with their very important “tech trees” and James Burke's television series Relationswhich highlighted the unpredictable processes by which an innovation could lead to others over the centuries or millennia. Even in the 1970s, Fortier-Dubois written“Burke was already concerned about the fact that our lives depend on technological systems that very few people understand deeply. It is, of course, possible to live without understanding computers, money or planes. But when everything around us feels vaguely magical, depends on the experts in which we have no way to check, it is easy to lose confidence in technological solutions.” He offers the Historic technological tree As a potential correction of this loss of understanding and the annoying attitudes it produces.
Fortier-Dubois himself admits that the project “made me realize how little I knew about the objects around me. I did not really know that “electronics” meant controlling the flow of electrons with vacuum tubes or semiconductors, or that kerosene refining oil uses fractional distillation, or that WiFi and Bluetooth are simply the use of certain radio-radio frequencies which can be detected by a specific game. “Anyone who explores this first version of the first version of the first version of the first version Historic technological tree (which, to date, contains technologies from 1886 and 2180 connections between them) will find educational experience in the same way, provided that it is not only knowledge of technology
But a feeling of the quantity of this knowledge that we are missing. Our civilization has made its way of stone tools with robotaxis, mRNA vaccines and LLM chatbots; We would all be better able to live with it with even a slightly clearer idea of ​​the way it did. Visit the Historic technological tree here.
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Based in Seoul, Colin MArshall Written and broadcastTS on cities, language and culture. His projects include the substack newsletter Books on cities And the book The stateless city: a walk through Los Angeles from the 21st century. Follow it on the social network formerly known as Twitter in @ColinmArshall.
At Learnopoly, Finn has championed a mission to deliver unbiased, in-depth reviews of online courses that empower learners to make well-informed decisions. With over a decade of experience in financial services, he has honed his expertise in strategic partnerships and business development, cultivating both a sharp analytical perspective and a collaborative spirit. A lifelong learner, Finn’s commitment to creating a trusted guide for online education was ignited by a frustrating encounter with biased course reviews.