Re: What forces have shaped humanity most?

Description: All our gadgets were really invented in the 1840s.

Transcript:

I would say that, you know, the . . . the . . . that the various technologies beginning . . . or at least having a spiking point in the middle of the 19th Century with photography, and the telegraph, and the railroads which all came to be history in the same decade or two. But that really is a . . . is a set of forces. Sort of technological innovation and sort of capitalist . . . or I suppose non-capitalist exploitation of those technologies have led us to where we are today. Because to me, the Internet and television and all the rest – jet planes even – are just refinements on what was essentially invented between 1825 and 1850.

The . . . the technological innovations of . . . of the mid . . . right at the middle of the 19th Century that I mentioned – telegraph, photography, speed, steam engines, which I’ve . . . obviously steam engines came a little earlier, but got going in the ‘30s and ‘40s . . . 1930s and ‘40s – those . . . those . . . that moment, if you can call 20 years a moment . . . is hugely . . . hugely influential.