|
Connections is a brilliant new examination of the ideas, inventions,
and coincidences that have culminated in the major technological achievements
of today. The companion volume to the magnificent ten-part television series produced
by the BBC and broadcast over the Public Broadcasting System in autumn 1979, it
was conceived in the tradition of the highly popular Civilization and The
Ascent of Man. Both as book and television series,
Connections masterfully combines popular science and detective work to retrace
the steps that led to eight inventions that ushered in the technological age.
The computer, the production line, telecommunications, the airplane, the atomic
bomb, plastics, the guided rocket, and television are innovations that permanently
altered civilization and man's relationship to nature. James
Burke, serving as both author and television host, untangles the pattern of interconnecting
events, the accidents of time, circumstance, and place that gave rise to these
inventions and to a host of related discoveries along the way. He shows, for example,
how attempts to pump water from mines in fifteenth century Europe led to the discovery
of air pressure and then to the invention of the barometer -- illustrating part
of the technological progression that made possible Alexander Graham Bell's breakthrough
in Boston in 1875. The process is bedazzling, and yet its driving force, Burke
asserts, is not individual genius but social inventiveness: the creative adaptations
and combinations of preexisting elements, practices, and devices. "The
reason why each event took place where and when it did," says Burke, "is
a fascinating mixture of accident, climatic change, genius, craftsmanship, careful
observation, ambition, greed, war, religious belief, deceit, and a hundred other
factors." Historical and humanistic in approach, Connections also
explains how technology works, how it affects us, and why technological development
is accelerating at an unprecedented rate. Burke, as scientific sleuth, unveils
an enthralling story, where each turn of events seems as much of a surprise now
as it was at the time of discovery. By pointing out how every member of society,
not just isolated geniuses, is involved in the process of change, Connections
offers an important new view of history and the man-made world. A
graduate of Oxford University, James Burke was the BBC's chief reporter on the
Apollo missions to the moon. In 1972 he began his own weekly television series,
"The Burke Special." Connections has been over two years in the
making, and research and filming has taken the author to twenty-three countries.
For his television achievements James Burke was awarded the Royal Television Society
Silver Medal in 1973 and the Gold Medal in 1974. He lives in London. |
