The First Decade of the Twentieth Century

The Burgess Shale of Modern Technology

The author compares five primitive life forms from the Burgess Shale of over 500,000,000 years ago to five new technologies invented or developed in the first decade of the twentieth century in terms of their development and importance both in the past and for the future. He speculates on some possible alternative courses of history if different events had occurred during the first decade and what effect those alternative courses might have had on our lives today.