What’s of interest? Historical Tech Tree
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The historical tech tree is a project by Étienne Fortier-Dubois to visualize the entire history of technologies, inventions, and (some) discoveries, from prehistory to today. Unlike other visualizations of the sort, the tree emphasizes the connections between technologies: prerequisites, improvements, inspirations, and so on.
These connections allow viewers to understand how technologies came about, at least to some degree, thus revealing the entire history in more detail than a simple timeline, and with more breadth than most historical narratives. The goal is not to predict future technology, except in the weak sense that knowing history can help form a better model of the world. Rather, the point of the tree is to create an easy way to explore the history of technology, discover unexpected patterns and connections, and generally make the complexity of modern tech feel less daunting.
The idea of tech trees comes from games, especially the Civilization series. But game tech trees optimize for fun, not accuracy. They have often been criticized, and for good reason: they embed assumptions about the nature of technological progress that can be problematic. For example, they force technology to advance in a predetermined way; they rely on certain cultural ideas about progress; and they’re simplistic.
Where is it?: https://www.historicaltechtree.com/
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