Connections by James Burke (1978)
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(Warning: spoilers ahead)
The first, "The Trigger Effect" highlights how utterly and irrevocably dependent human civilization is on a broad web of technology and how delicate that web is, the so called "technology trap". Break it and we can expect an astronomical death toll. (We got a tiny taste of this in the supply chain disruptions of COVID-19.) No one wants to think about it or believe it but the breakdown of civilization is actually possible.
The final episode, "Yesterday, Tomorrow and You", ties together the past episodes by pointing out that technological progress is not really controllable or stoppable because of its incremental and interlocking nature. Yet by doing so, we are only deepening our dependence on an ever more delicate web of technology without which we are helpless. Moreover, we don't even know where this unstoppable technological progress is taking us; perhaps a utopia but just as likely a hellscape. (An example of this is the unforeseen societal consequences of the growth of social media or the loss of privacy caused by the web.) It is enough to make one think that the apocalypse preppers aren't entirely wrong.
It is one of the most utterly terrifying and thought provoking concepts I have encountered over a lifetime of gathering knowledge.
What you are describing is one of two cautionary tales in the series: technological progress will continue to accelerate (because the possible recombinations of existing ideas will grow exponentially), and we will be increasingly dependend on and caught in it. This is not entirely original, but has been lamented over and over again for many centuries before Burke. Just consider this verse of a still popular German lullaby from the 18th century:
We, with our proud endeavour,
Are poor vain sinners ever,
There’s little that we know.
Frail cobwebs we are spinning,
Our goal we are not winning,
But straying farther as we go [0].
PS: a possible corrolary of the central thesis is that we should stop goal-driven research to progress further. But that is of course not true: goal-driven research is exactly what caused a great part of human progress, it's just that the initial goal was almost never met.
TBF the fear of systemic collapse was very much on-Zeitgeist in the '70s, too.
I have to disagree - this theme, though reaching its greatest exposition in the 20th century, is not really a modern concept and was discussed by multiple ancient philosophers, including Laozi, Zhuangzi, and at least one Roman writer whose name escapes me at the moment
I'm not sure that this should be terrifying, civilizations come and go, it's a question of when rather than if, unless you think our civilization is unique among all the others. But I don't think people should stay awake, worrying about civilizational collapse. Our own individual life is much more fragile, so maybe worry about getting enough exercise instead.
But this point doesn't seem very profound or interesting to me, nor do I believe it is Burke's central thesis, which I really believe is about the connections between different technological advances. That is, how does technological process happen, and specifically, how did it happen in the West? History of technology is fascinating to me.
I love this show, it's really a masterwork and a great learning program for young students as well as entertainment for us geezers.
I would note that "the collapse of the Roman Empire" was a very relative thing. The Western empire split and East empire kept going. Things that seemed collapse-related happened; the Vandals lived by looting civilization for quite a while, population and cities shrank, and Vikings also plundered for hundreds of years. But agricultural society and a number of social/technological innovations continued and in ways made progress. And Eastern Roman/Byzantium continued until conquered by a more advanced society. Mentioning this 'cause the classical collapses of the Maya, precolumbian-society or bronze age societies apparently didn't do this. People left, died, went back to hunting and gathering. Those could be called "true" collapses.
Which is to say that even Roman may have been at the point that a classical Tainter collapse couldn't quite happen. And today, while our create multiple disasters, we seem be well past a point where you could talk about a rise and fall of civilization. What we're looking at is the direction of the explosive expansion of market/technological/social progress. Even a disaster wiping out, say 90% of the human population on earth would see a rebound in a terrifying short period of time, historically speaking.
But anyway, I agree with the rest of what the parent says.
I don't think there is even a question that it's unique considering how far it's come in understanding physics math and engineering. To lose all of that would be a great disaster.
For those collapsed civilizations, it was only that there were sufficient remaining resources in the earth and that their civilization was geographically limited that after centuries and many injections of knowledge from elsewhere that they were able to slowly bounce back, to rediscover what they lost.
The risk today is that we're so interconnected, we've extracted so much of earth's resources, and we've set ourselves on a path towards permanent environmental change, that we may not get another chance at civilization. It may be we recede back to ignorance permanently.
1) the amount of valuable resources sitting above ground is now immense. What's currently missing is a good way to "harvest" them. Necessity being the mother of invention ...
2) Problems with "sufficient remaining resources" are only really relevant if population levels do not decline dramatically. It seems likely to me the civilizational collapse in our era would also be accompanied by substantial population declines, some through the death of the living, some through reduced life expectancy of newly born people, some through reduced birth rates.
3) In the long run, it doesn't matter if individuals lose knowledge, only if the knowledge becomes lost to all and needs to be discovered anew (from the world, rather than from some sort of cultural artifact).
We lost an enormous amount of knowledge in those time frames.
It took six hundred years for the Romans to reach the same technical level as the Athenians. It then took almost one thousand years for the Italians to again reach the same level as the Romans (this time being greatly increased by the shenanigans of Catholic church).
That was the whole point of the rediscovery of "classical" knowledge from the "ancients" in the Renaissance.
When we speak of Ancient Greek technical innovations, we're usually talking about the Hellenism era. That was after Athens had begun to wane as a major intellectual center, and much closer in time to the Romans' ascent in the Mediterranean.
* the social organization and structures required for technologically complex societies
* the knowledge required for certain technologies
* the loss (or otherwise) of knowledge by humanity, as opposed to local loss of knowledge[EDIT: Along with various libraries throughout Europe that also acted as repositories for Greco-Roman knowledge ]
True, but a lot of that stuff was re-invented only to be later discovered that the Greeks/Romans had done it first.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCT6Y5JJPKe_JDMivpKgVXew
Just think of things like cars. It's fairly straightforward to keep cars pre-1980 on the road even if the manufacturer is no longer making parts for it. A craftsman can still make the parts.
But more modern cars? Fuggeddabootit. Watchagonna do with the computer systems? Write a few million lines of code? You can't even buy the chips anymore.
Edit: The Wikipedia article [0] does have a good summary, which I think makes us both right: There are really a collection of theses, none of which in my opinion dominate the show, except possibly the unplanned nature of technological evolution.
Take a look at the scene about 42 minutes into the last episode where technological artifacts are being smashed to Wagnerian music and listen to what he says just beforehand.
Does any of that sound optimistic?
I'm not convinced though as to how terrified I ought to be. I understand that there is a complexity and inter-connect-edness in our present day society, but the fear of nuclear, mutual annihilation is the part of the original series that seems the most dated.
I suppose I choose to feel a little more optimistic. I consider the people in the first episode, when all of greater Manhattan lost power, that gathered, celebrated, and ate a birthday cake by candlelight.
Civilization won't break down. Though there may be momentary, brief interruptions.
Let's just take one more non-war example: Another Carrington level solar storm is an inevitability (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrington_Event). Imagine a global power and network outage for an indeterminate period of time and what it's effects would be.
That said, I agree that it still points to the opposite conclusion - civilization has not ended, but has changed dramatically. Same as every other time.
I've been meaning to watch more of them...maybe I'll get around to it over the holiday weekend. :)
The show holds up very well given it's age, but the image quality is especially difficult to watch on modern LCD screens.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/504632459/james-burke-c...
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mUb6Sv-rUv0
[2] http://k-web.org
A recent Economics Explained walked through wealth inequality in some Scandinavian countries (TL;DR: it's high). This is different from income inequality, which is quite low. It walked through the wealth of Charlene de Carvalho-Heineken, who has a net worth of $13B, by virtue of having inherited Heineken. Her family bought (not founded) Heineken 200 years ago, and the family fortune dates back a half-millennium.
There are really neat documentary channels like that. I'm not downplaying Burke, who was brilliant, but two bits of progress:
- In 1978, he didn't have the Internet. Research is much easier today.
- In 2020, anyone can produce high-quality documentaries. In 1978, you needed a massive investment.
I'm not trying to imply it's easy, but we've gone from where you need a video editing studies, reels of film, and a research team, to where you just need to spend a few years as a super-nerd to pick up the requisite skills, and drop perhaps $2000 on cameras and microphones. Indeed, if you're scrappy, you can do pro-quality with just a better cell phone and computer, with a lot more work.
I'd guess a lot of channels were inspired by Connections.
I know Mechanical Universe inspired a lot of (now better) Youtube channels, like 3Blue1Brown. So these early documentaries were pivotal, but we've also come a long ways from there.
- "Connections" used a substantial amount of acted historical scenes. Creating them in such a quality (and not some sketchy animation or a re-cut of existing work) is still a challenge today. You need half-decent actors.
- Technical quality is secondary to content. "Connections" is not just a collection of interesting and well-made bits about how technology evolved, there is an entire and compelling theory behind it, which Burke tries to bring accross. Such aspirations, executed with such intellectual and inspirational confidence, need something more than just technical ability and financial resources. Just because paper and ink got much cheaper since the 16th century, we didn't suddenly produce a Shakespeare every 2 years.
So far, I haven't seen any historical documentation on YouTube which even compares to the depth and width of "Connections".
For a TV station/network/organization to have exposed us to just one of (for example): David Bruce, 12Tone or Adam Neely would be remarkable enough, but we actually get all three and then a whole bunch of others who are in the same general ballpark.
For example, the "David Bennett Piano" channel, produced by a young UK piano player, has a 15 minute segment that is hands-down the best explanation of why many musical cultures settled on dividing the octave into 12 tones. It's better than anything I've ever seen on TV.
It is true that these tend to be shorter and more focused presentations than series like Connections. I'm not sure I see anything inherently wrong with that. It's also true that they don't score always hit it out of the park for every "episode" they produce (unlike much the more collaborative processes that would have led to each episode of Connections). But I'm not sure I see much a problem with that either.
> - "Connections" used a substantial amount of acted historical scenes. Creating them in such a quality (and not some sketchy animation or a re-cut of existing work) is still a challenge today. You need half-decent actors.
But is this core to the value? I find a lot of the animated versions, Ken Burns, and stock footage on Youtube to be way more than good enough. It's exactly as you said: It's about the content.
> Just because paper and ink got much cheaper since the 16th century, we didn't suddenly produce a Shakespeare every 2 years.
We kinda did, actually. He's hidden among a massive pile of stuff, but he's there. Brilliant books come out far more frequently than I can read. I'd place many well above Shakespeare, not in fame, but in quality.
> So far, I haven't seen any historical documentation on YouTube which even compares to the depth and width of "Connections".
My favorites are Extra History (history) and 3Blue1Brown (math). I think both have at least the same depth and width, albeit in a different direction.
Is there a name for this idea?
And his journalist background and connections enabled him to have the access necessary to shoot single-take sequences such as this:
https://youtube.com/watch?v=2WoDQBhJCVQ
(Hardly the only impressive on-location scene in his work.)
Agreed with your comments on the primary importance of writing and research. I'd argue that Chris & Evan Hadfield's "Rare Earth" is getting close, Tom Scott is doing quite well, and Derrek Muller's "Veritasium" and Destin Sandlin's "Smarter Every Day" have promise.
Several YouTubers have been picked up by traditional broadcasters/production organisations, notably Hank Green ("Crash Course"), with PBS, and Emily Graslie ("Prehistoric Road Trip"), with the Chicago Field Museum. YouTube as a training and recruiting ground has merits.
One reason Connections is so hard to compare to is that it's pretty incomparable: forty years on we're still discussing it in glowing terms. It was produced by someone well-established and experienced at least within the BBC, and backed by the organisation. Notably, little from either national/public broadcasting or commercial production has even approached it. My short list includes Sagan's Cosmos, Burke's own The Day the Universe Changed, Ken Burns. Daniel Yergin's The Prize. And of course Kenneth Clarke's Civilisation and Jacob Bronowski's The Ascent of Man, which had paved the way for Burke himself. I might include Adam Curtis's works.
The role of the author or creative voice --- a Burke, Sagan, Burns, Bronowski, Clark, Curtis --- cannot be overstated. That talent seems rare, perhaps also the ability to simply get out of its way. Also realising when it's circled too hard back in on itself --- Burke had 2--3 good series in him, but he hasn't matched himself in at least three decades.
Related HN thread with additional recommendations: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2698026
Part of that is a more crowded field: there's more produced, it's harder to get noticed. Part my own near-total avoidance of broadcast television. But I don't think that's all of it.
And yes my HN history shows I'm quite the fan of Burke: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
Lowering the barrier to entry to anything just makes it easier to create crap. Even when not taken on its own terms, Connections is still a massive achievement given this lack of ease. If you look at the book supplement to the series you can see the depth of research that went into the show.
The Internet making research "easier" is false economy since it's cluttered with misinformation and even more crap. To get good information on the Internet requires more effort that you give it credit for (see the practice of OSINT).
Though Connections is entertaining, an afternoon down the Wikipedia rabbit hole on any topic will give you sooo much more information and context than Burke could have dreamed of in 1978. My issue with many of those YouTube channels you're talking about is they do little but read for the viewer (NOT 3Blue1Brown, his work is the gold standard of course).
This isn't a horrible thing, but it would be nice if those channels put a bit more work into synthesizing their content, rather than just regurgitating Wikipedia for views.
Burke has a gift for showing how disparate technologies are actually related - And much to learn along the way.
Helps with games of Trivial Pursuit, too - Good for the holidays :)
Highly recommend.
Free markets for the win!
Dare I say, it's even better than Cosmos?
Much as I love James Burke, there is a rather funny parody of him from the old "Not The Nine O'Clock News" comedy series in the UK: https://youtu.be/82GUX_NA7AU?t=65