The story of the events and the people who, over centuries, came together to bring us in from the cold and to wrap us in a warm blanket of technology is a matter of vital importance, since more and more of that technology infiltrates every aspect of our lives. It’s become a life support system without which we can’t survive. And yet, how much of it do we understand? Do I bother myself with the reality of what happens when I get into a big steel box, press a button, and rise into the sky? Of course I don’t.
The things around us—the manmade inventions we provide ourselves with—are like a vast network, each part of which is interdependent with all the others.
New York City, like all the other major high-density population centers scattered across the Earth, is a technology island. It can neither feed nor clothe nor house nor warm its inhabitants without supplies from outside. Without those supplies, the entire massive structure and the teeming millions it encloses would die. And yet, in cities everywhere, we act as if that were not so.
Never have so many people understood so little about so much.
