Episode #20 – “Technology”

“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”

— Arthur C. Clark, author

Date Published

12/05/2021

Main Topic

Technology

Length

1hr 39min

In this week’s episode we have a discussion on technology. Mr. Beard kick-starts the tech talk explaining the invention of the transistor. A seemingly under-appreciated component of so many devices and tools that we have grown to depend on like a basic switch or electronic signal. From an electrical technology perspective, we bring the wonderful and brilliant Nikola Tesla into the conversation, the man that developed the practices to tap into the Earth’s magnetic field or ‘Magnetosphere’ to generate perpetual energy devices and the invention of alternating current.

We explore the invention of the Sony Walkman out of Japan, and how this portable technology revolutionised music listening for the masses, and how a cool yellow brick on your pants gave rise to the next generation of personal music devices like the iPod. We go through a timeline of communications technology starting from cave drawings and smoke signals, all the way up to mobile phones and WiFi technology which is an application of Tesla’s inventions more than 100 years later.

We can’t escape a conversation on computing and the unbelievable advances that we have witnessed in recent decades. Mr. Beard introduces the Blockchain and gives a description of its invention by an anonymous person or group known only as Satoshi Nakamoto. Blockchain has the power to change and revolutionise the world through operations like cryptocurrency, NFTs and a host of new communications platforms.

We are of course going through a global medical transformation in 2021. Many people cite the invention of the vaccine as one of the major biological/ medical breakthroughs of the modern age. This is mirrored also by projects like the human genome project of the 70’s. Mapping and understanding human DNA sequencing has opened up Pandora’s Box to the brilliance of biology, from the study of molecular interactions between protein folding in bioinformatics to the development of the next generation in medical technology. It is said that this decade will be the decade of biological sc...