If you've followed my posts for a while, especially my irregular Cool Creator Spotlight series (latest link), you know I love history and technology. I like how things are made. I like the progress of industry. I like to try to understand how and why things are the way they are.
A library patron recently reminded me of the 1978 BBC series Connections, hosted by James Burke. I took some time to revisit it, and consider how much has advanced in the last few decades, yet how little our concerns have changed.
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Episode 1 begins with a description of a 1965 power outage and its impact on the lives of everyone on the eastern seaboard of the US. It then asks what would be necessary to rebuild after an even more widespread disaster, and recounts how everything we consider "civilization" today traces back to the plow and sedentary agriculture.
Subsequent episodes follow a whirlwind tour through history and technology to explore the interconnected experiments and accidents and bizarre coincidences that lead to major breakthroughs of modern life.
The final episode ties everything together, and asks some big questions. When I entitled this post, "A Thought-Provoking Documentary," I mean it. Unlike most documentarians, Burke offers several possible positions one could take after seeing these connections and their possible consequences. Much of it is hilariously obsolete in hindsight. Other points, however, are quite prescient, or at least still open to debate.
Who decides what is socially desirable, and what isn't? You? Me? And on what basis?
This question is part of every political discussion and social media argument today, even though Burke couldn't have foreseen social media in the first place. He also warns of the possibility we are seeing materialize now, where bureaucracy balloons and knowledge fragments between specialists. He doesn't address the arguments against government funding of science or enforcement of intellectual property. His illustrations of computers are absurd in our era of ubiquitous laptops and smartphones. But he still asks questions we can apply to today's hot button issues like crypto and generative AI.
Why should you track this down and watch it in 2025, almost 50 years after it was filmed?
- It offers a solid exploration of the history of technology and its effect on every aspect of our society we take for granted today.
- It lets us look back on the concerns of the past, and weigh them against the concerns of our present day.
- It is extremely well produced for its time, presented in an engaging manner, and encourages asking deeper questions.
- The overarching theme encourages exploration of unexpected connections and overlooked discoveries to gain a better understanding of our world instead of narrowly focusing on individual subjects, lest we blind ourselves to possibilities.
I only caution particularly prudish viewers that episode 3 contains a couple scenes of nudity. Otherwise, the content should be suitable for all ages from the middle grades and up. I should note the library DVD set I watched also had some issues preventing me from seeing all of a couple episodes, so I may have overlooked something along the line there.
Update: as of January 2025, the series is available on the Internet Archive here.
