10 - Connections (TV series) - Yesterday, Tomorrow and You
"Yesterday, Tomorrow and You" recaps the theme that change causes more change. Burke ties together the modern inventions in which previous episodes had culminated: telecommunications, the computer, the jet engine, plastics, rockets, television, the production line, and the atomic bomb. All of these inventions come together in the B-52 nuclear bomber. Start with the plow, you get irrigation, pottery, craftsmen, civilisation and writing, mathematics, a calendar to predict floods, empires, and a modern world where change happens so rapidly you cannot keep up. What do you do? Stop the change? Throw away all technology and live like cavemen? Decide what change will be allowed by law? Or just accept that the world is changing faster than we can keep up with?