There's an old BBC TV series called Connections that explores how technological progress happened. I think you can find most/all episodes on YouTube now.
Nice coincidence! Last week-end I remembered watching Connections in the 1990s on TV, blowing my 7th grade mind back then, and then watched it partly out of nostalgia. I ended up binging it, and was surprised that it felt even better now. Especially the philosophical aspects felt even more important now.
At the end I was a bit upset that there isn't anything like this being made, where the production treats the audience as intelligent and capable of grasping complex topics.
I make it an actual point of rewatching the entire thing yearly.-
When at some point nothing else does, that show rekindles a sense of wonder and amazement at life and its complexity that is sine qua non for me.-
PS. I feel it also serves to (somehow) "frame" each of our lives - my own - as being dot-positioned as a small- yet significant - speck in a big, ongoing, neverending, marvelous, unavoidable and unstoppable march through time.-
Further - and Burke makes an special point of this in one of the "framing" episodes - the individual people (that is, us) responsible for that onward march were as confused, concerned, discouraged or baffled about their future as we might be today about ours - or, oft - just trying to get by, or make a buck.-
Poignantly, this might sound obvious, they, further did not know what the future held, what the consequences would be of their actions - but somehow, in lockstep - all the necessary pieces were being put together for some grand, tectonic invention or method to later appear, making their individual contributions indispensable.-
