Schwarz
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This is the fertile territory explored by Professor David Edgerton of Imperial College in his new book, The Shock of the Old. In it he eviscerates our obsession with novelty. It's time, he argues, to look at the history of science and technology in a new way. It's blindingly obvious, really. Instead of recording the history of when devices and processes were invented or predicted, why not look at the way we really use things?
I find him in Buenos Aires for Christmas - he was born in Uruguay, of an English father and Argentine mother. He knows that Fray Bentos is a real place, not just a brand of corned beef. And not just a real place, but a remarkable example of 19th and 20th century industrialized food production whose scale and efficiency - without need even of refrigeration - rivals anything in the world today. Our shops are still full of such canned food, an alternative, older technology we never stop to think about.
We are both alive to the irony of the fact that, in an online age, we are talking to each other by telephone, a 19th century invention. I mention the fact that outside my window is an ancient wooden pole sprouting copper wires in a way the Victorians would have recognised, and that our words are passing through it. 'Ah yes,' he shoots back, 'But you'll find that the wires have changed, the exchanges are different. It's like today's airliners. They're no faster now than they were in the 1950s, but they're more efficient'.