Locks are a pretty old human invention - they go way back 4.000 years. This also tells us a lot about the human mind, it’s greed and it’s need for security. But a lock without a door or a box is useless - to this invention is connected to a whole chain of other technologies.

One invention always depends on other inventions.

Adam Curtis / documentary / ca 44 minutes

From Wikipedia:

A look at how former Ghanaian leader Kwame Nkrumah set Africa ablaze with his vision of a new industrial and scientific age. At the heart of his dream was to be the huge Volta dam, generating enough power to transform West Africa into an advanced utopia. But as his grand experiment took shape, it brought with it dangerous forces Nkrumah couldn’t control, and he slowly watched his metropolis of science sink into corruption and debt.

More? Pandora’s Box Series

If you society only imports technology it lacks the experience of reinventing the wheel and the progress of adapting this new idea.

Many inventors were far ahead of their societies, but because nor the public or the elite could understand the invention and it’s glory they got forgotten.

Improving society by invention is also about communication, education and integration. That is why progress takes time - ideas, change and technology needs time to take roots.

So the wheel has to be reinvented again and again, so we understand the process, learn from it and appreciate it.