What happens when the machines still work, but nobody remembers how they were built? We explore technological amnesia, black-box automation, lost expertise, and civilizations trapped inside inherited technology.

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Credits:

Can a Civilization Forget How Its Own Technology Works?

Written, Produced & Narrated by: Isaac Arthur

Music by Epidemic Sound: http://nebula.tv/epidemic

Stellardrone & Chris Zabriskie

Select imagery/video supplied by Getty Images

Chapters

0:00 Intro

2:51 Forgetting the Footnotes

7:33 Black Boxes and Sacred Buttons

12:46 12 Years

14:08 Tradition, Taboo, and the Maintenance Guild

19:54 Colonies That Inherit Too Much

23:22 The Stagnant Stars

27:03 Alien Life

28:03 How Not to Forget

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