Connections by James Burke (1978).pdf

(47532 KB) Pobierz
To
MadeliQe
Design by Robert
Updegraff
.
Picture research by Juliet Brightmore
Artwork research by Dr Jack Silver
Artwork by Nigel Osborne, Jim Marks, Berry/Fallon
Design, David Penny, Angus McBride
Copyright
©
James Burke 1978
All rights reserved. No part of this publication
may be reproduced or transmitted, in any form
or by any means, without permission.
First published 1978 by
MACMILLAN LONDON LIMITED
London and Basingstoke
Associated companies in Delhi, Dubhn,
Hong Kong, Johannesburg, Lagos, Melbourne,
New York, Singapore and Tokyo
Printed by Sackville Press Billericay Ltd
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Burke, James, b.1936
Connections.
I.
Technology - History
I.
Title
609
T15
ISBN 0-333-24827-9
Contents
Author's Acknowledgements
Introduction
VI
..
VB
I
2
3
4
S
6
7
8
9
10
The Trigger Effect
The Road from Alexandria
Distant Voices
Faith in Numbers
The Wheel of Fortune
Fuel to the Flame
The Long Chain
Eat, Drink and Be Merry
Lighting the Way
Inventing the Future
Further Reading
Index
I
IS
4S
81
lIS
IS3
18S
21S
249
287
296
299
Author's Acknowledgements
There are so many people without whose invaluable assistance this
book could not have been written
-
in
particular members of univer-
sity faculties - that it is impossible for me to express my gratitude to
each one individually. I hope they will forgive me if I mention only
two of their colleagues whose guidance was particularly generous.
Professor Lynn White,Jr, of UCLA brought his immense knowledge
and wisdom to bear on keeping me on the right track, and Dr Alex
Keller of Leicester University was at hand more times than I can
remember in moments of panic.
I should also like to thank John Lynch for his meticulous and
rewarding assistance in research, Mick Jackson and David Kennard
for their frequent and sympathetic aid in giving the structure what
imaginative expression it has, and the rest of the BBC production
team who worked so hard to make possible the television series with
which this book is associated: John Dollar, Hilary Henson, Robyn
Mendelsohn, Shelagh Sinclair, Diana Stacey, and in particular my
assistant, Maralyn Lister.
I should like to compliment Michael Alcock of Macmillan
on
his
unusual ability to make writing a book virtually painless, and to
thank Angela Dyer for making order out of shambles, and Robert
Updegraff and Juliet Brightmore for investing the text with the kind
of illustration worthy of a better work.
Last, but far from least, I thank my long-suffering wife, who has
put up with many difficulties during the two years of preparation.
JAMES
BURKE
London,
1978
Introduction
Man has lived in
close
contact
with
change since he first appeared on
Earth. During
everyone
of
the thirty-six
million
minutes
of his life,
his own body alters imperceptibly
as
it moves from birth to maturity
to death. Around him, the physical world too is in constant change,
as the seasons pass:
each
day brings visible evidence of the annual
cycle of growth, fertility and decay.
These fundamental
changes
have a rhythm with which mankind has
become
familiar
over the
ages.
Each generation the population is
replenished, each year nature
is renewed,
each
day
the sun rises and
sets, and although the
new plants and
animals and children differ
frol11
their predecessors, they are recognizably of the same family.
When a new species
appears,
or the constellations shift in
the
heavens,
the change occurs over immeasurably
long
periods during which man
can gradualJy
adapt
to it.
But the moment lllan first picked up a stone or a branch to use as a
tool, he altered irrevocably the balance between him and his environ-
ment. From this point on, the way in which the world around
hil11
changed was different. It was no longer regular or predictable.
New
objects appeared that were not recognizable as a mutation of some-
thing that had existed before, and as
each
one emerged it altered the
environment not for a season, but for ever. While the number of these
tools remained small, their effect took a long time to spread and to
cause change.
But
as
they
increased, so did their
effects:
the more the
tools, the faster the
rate of
change.
It is with that
aspect
of change that this book is concerned.
Toda
y
the rate
of
change has reached a point
where
it is questionable whether
the environment can sllstain it. My purpose is to
acquaint
the reader
with some of the forces that have caused change
in
the past, looking
in particular at
eight
recent innovations which may be most influential
in structuring our
own
futures and in causing a further increase in the
rate of change to which we may have to adapt. These
are
the atomic
bom b, the
telephone,
the com puter, the production-line system of
manufacture, the aircraft,
plastics,
the
guided
rocket and television.
Each
one
of these is part of a family of similar devices, and is the
result
of a
sequence
of closely
connected events extending from the
ancient
world until the
present
day.
Each has enormous
potential for
man's benefit
-
or his
destruction.

Plik z chomika:

Inne pliki z tego folderu:

Inne foldery tego chomika:

Zgłoś jeśli naruszono regulamin