This bomber stands for the interdependent world we have made for ourselves; where the rate of change accelerates every second because every one of ma… - James Burke

Never before have so many people understood so little about so much.

Einstein's theory was that everything about the laws of the universe and nature was relative. What you observe about something depends greatly upon your frame of reference at the time. That's why I can stand here in this Concorde [jetliner]cabin and drop my pen in comfort. In here I'm not traveling 1,400mph, am I? Everything works like that. Conditioned by its frame of reference. All the electronics in all the instruments in this cockpit obey the exact same laws they would if the plane were standing still. Because in this frame, like me they are not traveling at Mach two. And all the laws of nature behave the same way. This beam of light is going out in all directions at 186,000 miles per second. Being on the concord makes no difference to it's speed going forward, backwards sideways.

… That's all it takes to get you back to the late 18th century. Three grandfather's lifetimes. That's how close we are to it. And, yet, that world has disappeared so totally, it's like fairyland. Thatched cottages, meadows, happy peasants. A golden age. Garbage, all that. Nasty, brutish, and short - that's what life was all about. And dirty. And boring. And it had been like that for thousands of years! And then, suddenly, the whole complex polluted overpopulated phrenetic nonstop stressful high tech rat race that is the modern world... Life was suddenly no longer as simple as it had been. And the extraordinary thing is, none of that was planned.