There is no guarantee that the world must have evolved to create prosperous and free societies. Technology obviously plays a role in creating material plenty, but I am convinced that there is also an intimate link between technology and Western concepts of individuality. Millions of very intelligent people have devoted enormous effort to creating the comfortable lives we take for granted. Their achievements deserve to be treated with respect. James Burke of the BBC has written two books, both based on video series, that have been used in this course.
Connections explores the often bizarre interconnections between technological innovations.
Each episode would begin with some innovation in the past and end with something completely unrelated in the present. For example, the opening episode ends with the atomic bomb. Five minutes before the end of the program, Burke is still in the early 20th century talking about weather research, and especially the efforts of one scientist to understand optical phenomena in clouds. The first time I saw the video, I wondered how in the world Burke was going to wrap things up in five minutes. Day the Universe Changed deals with several points where the Western world experienced a fundamental change in how it viewed some important aspect of the world, for example, how the printing press changed our ideas about information and its reliability.