A Short History of Progress

Among other professional skills, Wright is an archaeologist. As such, he understands how to interpret the material record of a culture as information about its identity. Throughout the text, the tool record of each individual culture is used to describe its level of advancement and overall goals. Held together, the development of tools and weapons shows how technological progress unfolds across time.

Tools are the way we exceed our natural limitations to harness the world around us. They are therefore innately tied to human excess, which can be our downfall. Wright implores us to “Take weapons for example. Ever since the Chinese invented gunpowder, there has been great progress in the making of bangs: from the firecracker to the cannon, from the petard to the high explosive shell” (5). Eventually, this human focus on the development of weaponry would transcend gunpowder and become the world-destroying atom bomb. Wright mentions his terror of this weapon several times in the text, citing it as the most dangerous weapon on Earth, “obviously deadlier than the small bangs in millions of engines” (56). The atom bomb is Wright’s version of Frankenstein’s monster, the terrible creature brought about by unchecked scientific progress.

The “rebellion of tools” is not, however, limited to weapons: “Even very simple technology has enormous consequences.