About Our Heritage of Technology

“I do not think there is any thrill that can go through the human heart like that felt by the inventor as he sees some creation of the brain unfolding to success… such emotions make a man forget food, sleep, friends, love, everything.” — Nikola Tesla

Technology can be addicting, especially development work. it can become like a search for the “Holy Grail” if you let it. A lot of research and experimentation, building and rebuilding, successes and failures. You get to a point where you just know you are on the verge of making this new development work, but problems keep creeping in. It’s not a complete success but then it isn’t a complete failure either. Something inside of you keeps pushing you on, it keeps saying you are so close, don’t stop. Eventually, that inner being says this is mine! You become hooked, this new development takes over your life.

As I look back on my early days of working with computer technology, I think I frequently lost sight of the original purpose of the technology I was building. The original need of the end user faded away as I became more and more immersed in a system. My mind was telling me I could make it more stable, add more functions and, of course, make it run faster. In my mind, it became my system. On present reflection, I see that technology was fulfilling my needs of adventure, conquest and sense of purpose. 

When I was young and just starting out, I concentrated all my efforts on advancing the technical frontier. I paid little attention to matters outside the realm of the project I was working on, I avoided the larger realm of the project's influence. Later in my career, when I was expected to make critical decisions concerning why a project failed or why it took a direction different from it's intended direction; I learned that I lacked knowledge of non-technical matters such as: attitudes of clients, customers, and end users, cultural influences, business practices, environmental influences, social attitudes, issues of the time and trends of market influences. I did not understand that technology effects all aspects of our life and may cause critical issues with matters of culture, society, environment and finance. Nor did I see technology influencing how I thought of myself and my influence on the society, culture, environment and financial well-being of those around me. I did not foresee or care what the technologies I was helping to develop would become or how they would influence the future. Neither did my colleagues, and we never bothered to ask or even think about the consequences of our creations. We created simply because we could. 

Today our culture, economy, society and environment are being driven more and more by influences of evolving technologies. Age-old barriers of culture, geography, language and limits to access of knowledge are disappearing. As our technology increases, human creativity and potential for production are also increasing. We have put humanity at a point where we cannot stop the influence of technology on our present and our future.

 

That makes knowing our technical heritage as important as the technology itself. Heritage refers not only to our creations and events of the past; but is also an in-depth record of the collective knowledge of past customs, traditions, practices, characteristics, research, experience, economic, environmental and social memory of our creations. We need to study our technical heritage to gain access to the laboratory of human experience and library of human knowledge. Knowing the how, why and consequences of our past creations successes and failures, better prepares our engineers, scientists, technicians and humanity, in general, to meet the challenges new technologies may impose on us. Knowing the non-technical aspects of our technical heritage also helps us to include non-technical issues in our development processes to better integrate our creations, both successes and failures, into our present and future business practices, culture, environment, financial institutions and society.

The past intrigues me. When I look to the past I try to put myself in the moment, but I can’t quite get there. There seems to be some secret or underhanded scheme involved. It has taken the here and now moments of the first electric light bulb, first radio transmission, first television transmission, first computer and set them behind a frosted glass. I can see their blurry outline as they race back in time, getting smaller and smaller, further and further out of reach, racing to a vanishing point in time. But they never completely vanish. A part of our past creations live on in the present through a never ending renewal, reorganization, reassessment of knowledge, circumstances and remembered experience. As ideas, knowledge and creations of the past race to that vanishing point in time, bits of old ideas and knowledge get passed on through documentation, experience and recollections. Previous ideas, speculations and knowledge get added to present thought, present thought becomes embedded in the ideas, knowledge, circumstances and products of the future. We cannot stop the past from influencing our present nor our future. 

This is my belated look back at technologies that influenced my life, culture and society. I’m taking this on as a personal learning excise. It is not a formal or official study for any collage, university, academic entity or commercial business. It is not being done for any grade, degree, certificate, badge, money or goods of any kind. It’s just for fun, something I want to do. I’m sharing my research and reflections because I believe in the continuing promise of learning and collaboration through the openness of educational resources our present technology brings to us.