The journalist James Burke did a television series called "Connections" back in 1978, tracing some element of modern* life back through the several technological confluences that led to its development. It's rather dear—US $100 for the five-disc set—but a well-stocked local library might have it available.

cordially,

*The modernity depicted, that of the mid-seventies, will not strike the first-time viewer in the closing weeks of Weimar America as particularly au courant, and neither will the distracting leisure suits in which our genial writer/narrator drapes himself for his on-camera appearances.