The book “CODE” uses exactly this pattern. It starts with two people talking to each other via cans connected with string, and works its way up to complex networks and processor architecture.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Code-Language-Computer-Hardware-Sof...
I feel tempted to buy the current edition, but also to wait for the second.
There is still so much of the tech stack that hasn't changed since this book was published in 2000 - TCP, IP, DNS, binary, logic gates, etc. But there's also much that has changed that could be written about - virtualisation, containers, wifi, fibre, cloud infrastructure, USB, GPUs.