About Our Heritage of Technology

"Inventions are either the elaboration by later workers of the results of previous labor handed down by others, or original discoveries, small in their beginnings but far more important than what will later be developed from them." - Aristotle 

This is a story about the evolution of technology. It may appear to be framed as history but I make no claim to have separated errors, inaccuracies, interpretations, legends, myths, opinions, stories or tradition from fact. It is a multi-stranded story of man's curiosity, imagination and Innovation.  

“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 both fulfilling and frustrating. 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 completing a project that will change the world; but problems keep creeping in. The project is 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, frustration kicks in and overrides everything in your life, you become hooked on completing the project. You can't quit or take a break, you have to finish what you started. 

As I look back on my early days of working with computer and communications technology, I frequently lost sight of the original purpose of the technology I was developing. 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. 

“In this age of rapid advancement it is tempting pursue a course of study that concentrates solely on the advancement of technology.  Those that choose to take that path often find that although they are well equipped to deal with the latest ideas and machines, they lack an understanding of why and how these ideas began and how they evolved to present technologies.” - Williams, Michael R. A History of Computing Technology. Second Edition. IEEE Computer Society Press, Los Alamitos, California. 1997 p.iii

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 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, 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 (just look at AI today). 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 and if we were lucky enough, there were no limitations. 

 

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.

"Our heritage and ideals, our code and standards - the things we live by and teach our children - are preserved or diminished by how freely we exchange ideas and feelings." - Walt Disney 

Knowing our technical heritage is 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; and the enlightenment that stories, myths, opinions and legends from the minds of those past and present who give us our heritage of technology.