Connections - Yesterday Tomorrow and You - S1E10

First published at 16:27 UTC on October 30th, 2019.

"Yesterday, Tomorrow and You" recaps the theme that change causes more change. Burke ties together the modern inventions in which previous episodes had culminated: telecommunications, the computer, the jet engine, plastics, rockets, television, the production line, and the atomic bomb. All of these inventions come together in the B-52 nuclear bomber. Start with the plow, you get irrigation, pottery, craftsmen, civilisation and writing, mathematics, a calendar to predict floods, empires, and a modern world where change happens so rapidly you cannot keep up. What do you do? Stop the change? Throw away all technology and live like cavemen? Decide what change will be allowed by law? Or just accept that the world is changing faster than we can keep up with?

Connections explores an "Alternative View of Change" that rejects the conventional linear and teleological view of historical progress. James Burke contends that one cannot consider the development of any particular piece of the modern world in isolation. Rather, the entire gestalt of the modern world is the result of a web of interconnected events, each one consisting of a person or group acting for reasons of their own motivations (e.g., profit, curiosity, religion) with no concept of the final, modern result to which the actions of either them or their contemporaries would lead. The interplay of the results of these isolated events is what drives history and innovation, and is also the main focus of the series.

Category	Education
Sensitivity	Normal - Content that is suitable for ages 16 and over

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Connections - Yesterday Tomorrow and You - S1E10

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