September 8, 2026 • 10 mins
Imagine trying to describe our technology to someone from 1926. Now imagine trying to defend our tech to someone from 2126! Most importantly, how is this evolution impacting our brains and our bodies?
Feel free to DM me if you have a story you’d like me to cover . . On Facebook it’s Patty Steele and on Instagram Real Patty Steele
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Okay, so imagine trying to explain an iPhone to somebody
from 1926, or tougher yet, 1826. You show them this
glowing small slab of glass, no wires, it fits in
your pocket, but it can show you moving pictures from
anywhere on Earth. It answers questions, allows you to see
(00:21):
and chat with family members and friends in real time,
and you carry it casually, yet stare at it compulsively,
wherever you are. even while waiting in line for coffee
or at the grocery store. I'm Patti Steele. The last
100 years of technology haven't just been evolutionary. They've been explosive.
The question is, how is that playing in our heads?
(00:43):
That's next on The Backstory. The Backstory is back. Okay,
is there anything more ubiquitous than a smartphone? I mean, really? 91%
of adults in the U.S. have one. And if you're
in the demographic sweet spot, 18 to 49 years old, 97%
(01:04):
have that cellular lifeline to the outside world. But stop
and think about it. How unfathomable would this thing seem
to folks 200 or more years ago, or even 100
years ago? Yeah, by then they had telephones, but now
our devices replace a camera, a map, a library, a radio,
(01:24):
a TV, a typewriter, and even our mailbox. In the
blink of an eye, we've gone from cranking engines by
hand to training artificial intelligence. I mean, think about it.
In 1926, if you wanted to talk to somebody far away,
you used a rotary dial phone. You know what that is?
(01:44):
And that's if you were lucky enough to have one.
Most folks were still relying on a hand-cranked wooden phone
that connected you to an operator who then connected your call.
Less than half of all households even had electricity. News
traveled by newspaper. Music came from live performance or bulky phonographs.
(02:05):
Radio was in its infancy. And computers, they didn't exist.
Not small ones, not big ones. The word computer actually
described a person, usually a woman, who calculated numbers by hand.
What about transportation? Trains, steamships, and early automobiles. And a
flight across the country was for daredevils, while a flight
(02:28):
across the ocean was pretty much unheard of. The world
was mechanical, physical, tangible. And then came war. World War
II speeded up technology at a pace humanity couldn't have imagined.
There was radar, jet engines, the atomic bomb. And hidden
inside guarded rooms filled with wires and vacuum tubes, the
(02:50):
first programmable computers. ENIAC, built in 1945, weighed 30 tons.
It filled a room. It consumed insane amounts of electricity.
But it was weaker than the calculator app on your phone.
At the same time, something irreversible was beginning. For the
first time, machines could think in logic. The digital age
(03:15):
had quietly arrived. By the early 1960s, transistors had replaced
vacuum tubes. Computers shrank from room-sized monsters to cabinet-sized machines.
Then came the space race. And by 1969, NASA had
landed astronauts on the moon using computers that had less
(03:35):
processing power than a modern smart refrigerator. Think about that.
I mean, really, let that sink in. The guidance computer
that navigated Apollo 11 had about 64 kilobytes of memory.
Your average email contains more data than that. But technology
was compounding exponentially, and that growth is kind of deceptive.
(03:59):
At first, it feels slow. Then it becomes unstoppable. Okay,
then for the next couple of decades, computers were pretty
much just tools of governments and corporations. But they continued
to evolve. And then something radical happened. They entered our homes.
Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak built the Apple I in
(04:20):
a garage. Bill Gates and Paul Allen built software for
personal machines. The IBM PC, personal computer, launched in 1981. Suddenly,
computing wasn't just institutional. It was personal. Children learned to type.
Families bought floppy disks. Video games appeared in living rooms.
(04:42):
Technology wasn't just industrial. It was intimate. And then came
the Internet. In the early 1990s, imagine, that's only like
35 years ago, the Internet was a curiosity. By the
end of the decade, it was everywhere. See how it's
all speeding up? Dial-up tones, AOL CDs, chat rooms, email.
(05:05):
For the first time in human history, information moved instantly
across continents. Businesses were built overnight. Fortunes were made and
lost in the dot-com bubble. Borders began to blur. A
teenager in Ohio could talk to someone in Tokyo in
real time. That's dangerous. The world didn't just get smaller.
(05:26):
It became connected. Then came 2007. We should hear the
JAWS theme here. It was the iPhone. Not the first smartphone,
but the one that changed everything. A touchscreen computer in
your pocket with apps, maps, cameras, and more JAWS music here,
(05:48):
social media. In less than 15 years, the smartphone became
the most widely adopted technology in human history. And this
is going to curl your hair. more people now have
access to a smartphone than to clean drinking water. I mean,
think about that. It didn't just change communication. It changed commerce, politics, relationships,
(06:12):
people's lives. It changed attention. Entire industries disappeared. Taxi companies
disrupted by ride-sharing apps. Video rental stores erased by streaming.
The music business upended by streaming as well. Newspapers and
magazines struggling in the age of instant news. Technology wasn't
(06:34):
just advancing, it was restructuring our society. Then, by the 2010s,
we were introduced to something subtler and more powerful, algorithms.
Platforms started predicting what you'd watch and when you'd watch it,
what you'd buy, who you'd date, even what you'd believe.
(06:56):
Artificial intelligence stopped being science fiction. Voice assistants answered questions,
even got snarky. Self-driving cars started being tested on public roads.
Machine learning systems began diagnosing disease. So the tools were
no longer just tools, they were learning. And now we've
(07:17):
entered an era where technology doesn't just assist humans, it collaborates.
AI writes, designs, composes music, generates images, analyzes massive data
sets in seconds. Heck, it even speaks to you. Although
I promise I'm not AI. Remote work became global overnight
(07:38):
during the pandemic. Video calls replaced conference rooms. Cloud computing
replaced office servers. And it hasn't changed. It's just grown.
And now we're on the brink of quantum computing. brain-computer interfaces,
fully autonomous vehicles, synthetic biology. The speed of change is
(07:59):
no longer linear. It's, for some, frighteningly exponential. So here's
what's wild. Your great-grandparents may have been born before airplanes
were common. Your grandparents may have grown up without color TV.
Your parents remember life before the Internet. But you? You
carry a supercomputer in your pocket. In one century, humanity
(08:23):
went from horse-drawn transportation to reusable rockets landing themselves, from
handwritten letters to instant video across the planet, from mechanical
gears to artificial intelligence. If you took someone from 1926
and dropped them into today, they would think it was magic,
although it might terrify them. So here's the bigger question.
(08:47):
If someone from 2126 looks back at us, Will they
think we were still in the early days? No doubt.
The last 100 years weren't just about new gadgets. They
were about a shift in how humans interact with reality
itself and each other. And if history has shown us anything,
the next 100 years will make this era look primitive.
(09:12):
We are living in the most technologically accelerated moment in
human history. And it's only just beginning. We are more
connected now. yet lonelier than ever. How will the biology
and psychology of our brains adjust? I hope you liked
the backstory with Patti Steele. Please leave a review. I'd
(09:33):
love it if you'd subscribe or follow for free to
get new episodes delivered automatically. And feel free to DM
me if you have a story you'd like me to cover.
On Facebook, it's Patti Steele, and on Instagram, RealPattiSteele. I'm
(09:55):
Patti Steele. the pieces of history you didn't know you
needed to know.
Okay, so imagine trying to explain an iPhone to somebody
from 1926, or tougher yet, 1826. You show them this
glowing small slab of glass, no wires, it fits in
your pocket, but it can show you moving pictures from
anywhere on Earth. It answers questions, allows you to see
(00:21):
and chat with family members and friends in real time,
and you carry it casually, yet stare at it compulsively,
wherever you are. even while waiting in line for coffee
or at the grocery store. I'm Patti Steele. The last
100 years of technology haven't just been evolutionary. They've been explosive.
The question is, how is that playing in our heads?
(00:43):
That's next on The Backstory. The Backstory is back. Okay,
is there anything more ubiquitous than a smartphone? I mean, really? 91%
of adults in the U.S. have one. And if you're
in the demographic sweet spot, 18 to 49 years old, 97%
(01:04):
have that cellular lifeline to the outside world. But stop
and think about it. How unfathomable would this thing seem
to folks 200 or more years ago, or even 100
years ago? Yeah, by then they had telephones, but now
our devices replace a camera, a map, a library, a radio,
(01:24):
a TV, a typewriter, and even our mailbox. In the
blink of an eye, we've gone from cranking engines by
hand to training artificial intelligence. I mean, think about it.
In 1926, if you wanted to talk to somebody far away,
you used a rotary dial phone. You know what that is?
(01:44):
And that's if you were lucky enough to have one.
Most folks were still relying on a hand-cranked wooden phone
that connected you to an operator who then connected your call.
Less than half of all households even had electricity. News
traveled by newspaper. Music came from live performance or bulky phonographs.
(02:05):
Radio was in its infancy. And computers, they didn't exist.
Not small ones, not big ones. The word computer actually
described a person, usually a woman, who calculated numbers by hand.
What about transportation? Trains, steamships, and early automobiles. And a
flight across the country was for daredevils, while a flight
(02:28):
across the ocean was pretty much unheard of. The world
was mechanical, physical, tangible. And then came war. World War
II speeded up technology at a pace humanity couldn't have imagined.
There was radar, jet engines, the atomic bomb. And hidden
inside guarded rooms filled with wires and vacuum tubes, the
(02:50):
first programmable computers. ENIAC, built in 1945, weighed 30 tons.
It filled a room. It consumed insane amounts of electricity.
But it was weaker than the calculator app on your phone.
At the same time, something irreversible was beginning. For the
first time, machines could think in logic. The digital age
(03:15):
had quietly arrived. By the early 1960s, transistors had replaced
vacuum tubes. Computers shrank from room-sized monsters to cabinet-sized machines.
Then came the space race. And by 1969, NASA had
landed astronauts on the moon using computers that had less
(03:35):
processing power than a modern smart refrigerator. Think about that.
I mean, really, let that sink in. The guidance computer
that navigated Apollo 11 had about 64 kilobytes of memory.
Your average email contains more data than that. But technology
was compounding exponentially, and that growth is kind of deceptive.
(03:59):
At first, it feels slow. Then it becomes unstoppable. Okay,
then for the next couple of decades, computers were pretty
much just tools of governments and corporations. But they continued
to evolve. And then something radical happened. They entered our homes.
Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak built the Apple I in
(04:20):
a garage. Bill Gates and Paul Allen built software for
personal machines. The IBM PC, personal computer, launched in 1981. Suddenly,
computing wasn't just institutional. It was personal. Children learned to type.
Families bought floppy disks. Video games appeared in living rooms.
(04:42):
Technology wasn't just industrial. It was intimate. And then came
the Internet. In the early 1990s, imagine, that's only like
35 years ago, the Internet was a curiosity. By the
end of the decade, it was everywhere. See how it's
all speeding up? Dial-up tones, AOL CDs, chat rooms, email.
(05:05):
For the first time in human history, information moved instantly
across continents. Businesses were built overnight. Fortunes were made and
lost in the dot-com bubble. Borders began to blur. A
teenager in Ohio could talk to someone in Tokyo in
real time. That's dangerous. The world didn't just get smaller.
(05:26):
It became connected. Then came 2007. We should hear the
JAWS theme here. It was the iPhone. Not the first smartphone,
but the one that changed everything. A touchscreen computer in
your pocket with apps, maps, cameras, and more JAWS music here,
(05:48):
social media. In less than 15 years, the smartphone became
the most widely adopted technology in human history. And this
is going to curl your hair. more people now have
access to a smartphone than to clean drinking water. I mean,
think about that. It didn't just change communication. It changed commerce, politics, relationships,
(06:12):
people's lives. It changed attention. Entire industries disappeared. Taxi companies
disrupted by ride-sharing apps. Video rental stores erased by streaming.
The music business upended by streaming as well. Newspapers and
magazines struggling in the age of instant news. Technology wasn't
(06:34):
just advancing, it was restructuring our society. Then, by the 2010s,
we were introduced to something subtler and more powerful, algorithms.
Platforms started predicting what you'd watch and when you'd watch it,
what you'd buy, who you'd date, even what you'd believe.
(06:56):
Artificial intelligence stopped being science fiction. Voice assistants answered questions,
even got snarky. Self-driving cars started being tested on public roads.
Machine learning systems began diagnosing disease. So the tools were
no longer just tools, they were learning. And now we've
(07:17):
entered an era where technology doesn't just assist humans, it collaborates.
AI writes, designs, composes music, generates images, analyzes massive data
sets in seconds. Heck, it even speaks to you. Although
I promise I'm not AI. Remote work became global overnight
(07:38):
during the pandemic. Video calls replaced conference rooms. Cloud computing
replaced office servers. And it hasn't changed. It's just grown.
And now we're on the brink of quantum computing. brain-computer interfaces,
fully autonomous vehicles, synthetic biology. The speed of change is
(07:59):
no longer linear. It's, for some, frighteningly exponential. So here's
what's wild. Your great-grandparents may have been born before airplanes
were common. Your grandparents may have grown up without color TV.
Your parents remember life before the Internet. But you? You
carry a supercomputer in your pocket. In one century, humanity
(08:23):
went from horse-drawn transportation to reusable rockets landing themselves, from
handwritten letters to instant video across the planet, from mechanical
gears to artificial intelligence. If you took someone from 1926
and dropped them into today, they would think it was magic,
although it might terrify them. So here's the bigger question.
(08:47):
If someone from 2126 looks back at us, Will they
think we were still in the early days? No doubt.
The last 100 years weren't just about new gadgets. They
were about a shift in how humans interact with reality
itself and each other. And if history has shown us anything,
the next 100 years will make this era look primitive.
(09:12):
We are living in the most technologically accelerated moment in
human history. And it's only just beginning. We are more
connected now. yet lonelier than ever. How will the biology
and psychology of our brains adjust? I hope you liked
the backstory with Patti Steele. Please leave a review. I'd
(09:33):
love it if you'd subscribe or follow for free to
get new episodes delivered automatically. And feel free to DM
me if you have a story you'd like me to cover.
On Facebook, it's Patti Steele, and on Instagram, RealPattiSteele. I'm
(09:55):
Patti Steele. the pieces of history you didn't know you
needed to know.
Host
Patty Steele
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