An Alternate View of Change

It's hard for me to single out one influential work/idea/thing to share. And I have to say (for someone who was raised largely without TV) that it is not without some embarrasment that I nominate James Burke's "Connections" television series for the topic of this post.

The show followed a basic format:

1. start with an event (anywhere between the seventeenth century and 500 BCE)
2. show how this event necessitatated a particular invention (generally a seemingly inconsequential one)
3. demostrate how this invention allowed a new advancement in an entirely new field
4. follow this path through history to a major present day invention (plastic, television, the atomic bomb)

Not impressed yet? Here's the executive summary of "The Long Chain:"

In the 1600s Dutch commercial freighters controlled Atlantic trade routes. Competing British lines induced America to produce pitch to protect hulls of their royal vessels. This arrangement lasted until 1776, after which a Scottish inventor tried to produce pitch from coal tar. By the time he succeeded the navy was using copper instead. Subsequent experiments with coal tar yielded gaslight lamps, waterproofed garments, a brilliant mauve dye that established the German chemical industry and nylon, the first of the miracle plastics.

The formula is pretty simple, but Burke isn't necessarily a just proving out some butterfly-in-South-America theory (or at least that's not what this series taught me to appreciate). History, when seen from our perspective, can always be made to fall into a nice series of anticedents and happy accidents. Not only can these be especially beautiful, but they also suggest an extrodinary perspective of the future.

You can check out the full hour long versions of the first series here (that's ten hours of viewing pleasure).