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If you’re interested in this sort of thing, check out Steven B. Johnson’s “How We Got To Now”, which discussed this. https://www.pbs.org/show/how-we-got-now/

It’s only six episodes, and quite fascinating.

How We Got to Now is excellent! Quick and fascinating read. Especailly loved the story about Ada Lovelace at the end - waaay ahead of her times.

If you like this story, I recommend reading How We Got to Now: Six Innovations That Made the Modern World. Its a quick read and very interesting. And, yes, "cold" is one of the six.

https://www.amazon.com/How-We-Got-Now-Innovations/dp/1594633...

If you haven't yet read "How We Got to Now", I think you'd really like it. What you've concluded is one of the major themes of the book. I thought it was fascinating.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00INIXU5I/

> Reading more meant as people got older they couldn't see the small words. Glasses were invented then later the lenses used for making telescopes and then microscopes.

This is covered in a chapter on glass in Steven Johnson's book How we got to now: six innovations that made the modern world.

I recommend reading How We Got to Now: Six Innovations That Made the Modern World

https://www.amazon.com/How-We-Got-Now-Innovations/dp/1594633...

Worth noting article is by Steven Johnson, author most recently of How We Got to Now. Bonus points for Walter Benjamin reference in the lead.

Fiction:

Permutation City - Greg Egan

Revival - Stephen King

Glasshouse - Charles Stross

The City - Dean Koontz

Non-fiction:

Predictable Revenue - Aaron Ross

How We Got to Now: Six Innovations That Made the Modern World - Steven Johnson

The Idea Factory: Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Innovation - Jon Gertner

How Doctors Think - Jerome Groopman

Frankenstein's Cat: Cuddling Up To Biotech's Brave New Beasts - Emily Anthes

Zero to One - Peter Thiel

This reminded me of the book "How We Got To Now" by Steven Johnson. Really interesting book on how development in certain fields enabled other innovations ("adjacent possible"). Really well written and super interesting book! Also, bonus points for the last chapter on Ada Lovelace, and what a visionary she was in terms of what a computer could do.

https://www.amazon.com/How-We-Got-Now-Innovations/dp/1594633...

The closest I've ever seen a show get to the brilliance of Connections was Steven Johnson's "How We Got to Now" - http://www.pbs.org/show/how-we-got-now/

From Johnson's How We Got to Now:

> Places that had been intolerably hot and humid — including some of the cities where Frederic Tudor had sweated out the summer as a young man — were suddenly tolerable to a much larger slice of the general public. By 1964, the historic flow of people from South to North that had characterized the post-Civil War era had been reversed. The Sun Belt expanded with new immigrants from colder states, who could put up with the tropical humidity or blazing desert climates thanks to domestic air conditioning. Tuscon rocketed from 45,000 people to 210,000 in just ten years; Houston expanded from 600,000 to 940,000 in the same decade. In the 1920s, when Willis Carrier was first demonstrating air-conditioning to Adolph Zukor at the Rivoli Theatre, Florida’s population stood at less than one million. Half a century later, the state was well on the way to becoming one of the four most populous in the country, with ten million people escaping the humid summer months in air-conditioned homes. Carrier’s invention circulated more than just molecules of oxygen and water. It ended up circulating people too.

* Via: https://awealthofcommonsense.com/2020/06/the-air-conditionin...

Air conditioning was actually originally created for humidity control for printing presses and their ink. Temperature control for humans came later.

If you live in a somewhat humid area, it's worth considering getting a whole house dehumidifier in addition to an air conditioner:

* https://blog.totalhomesupply.com/whole-house-dehumidifier-pr...

The air temperature may be 24C/75F, and thus the AC is not active, but the RH may be >70% and you'll still be uncomfortable / "hot". If you don't have separate dehum the only way to deal with it is to drop the air setting further—in which case you start 'freezing'.

How We Got to Now, Steven Johnson. Walks you through a half dozen foundational inventions and the process through which they came to be. Fascinating to see what the inventors were trying to solve vs. how the world ended up applying their technology.

Unbroken, Laura Hillenbrand. If you haven't read the book don't judge it by the (awful) movie.

The Liberators: My Life in the Soviet Army. Really opens your eyes to the problems and realities of communism. I love the author's dry sense of humor as he witnesses the absurdity of many of the things he encountered.

Sniper on the Eastern Front, Albrecht Wacker. A view of WWII through the eyes of a German sniper.

Auschwitz: A Doctor's Eyewitness Account, Miklos Nyiszli. A view of the holocaust through the eyes of a Jewish doctor in the Auschwitz concentration camp.