TECHNOLOGY

In the arts, people's tastes have changed from age to age, but in a capricious and faddish manner. People have often abandoned some canon of beauty in painting, sculpture, architecture, music, or poetry and embraced another simply because they were bored with the old and eager to try something new.

But through all the ages of history, one human institution – technology – has plodded ahead. While empires rose and fell, forms of government went through their erratic cycles, science flared up and guttered out, men burned each other over differences of creed, and the masses pursued bizarre fads and fashions, the engineers went ahead with raising their city walls, erecting their temples and palaces, paving their roads, digging their canals, tinkering with their machines, and soberly and rationally building upon the discoveries of those who had gone before.

So, if there is any one progressive, consistent movement in human history, it is neither political, nor religious, nor aesthetic. Until recent centuries it was not even scientific. It is the growth of technology, under the guidance of the engineers.