Wonderland

Wonderland shows you that much of societal and technological progress actually originates from people playing and just following their curiosity, as it takes you on a tour of history’s greatest dabblers and how they helped build the future.

The oldest musical instrument in the world is the Aurignacian flute, which was found quite recently in Germany and is about 40,000 years old. Obviously, we’ve been tinkering with sounds for quite some time. This makes sense, as it was important in our development of language, but when you think of why you listen to music, we mostly do it to enjoy.

In 9th century Persia, the Banū Mūsā brothers, three scientists and scholars, created on one of the world’s greatest inventions for the same reason: to enjoy more music in their lives. In their Book of Ingenious Devices, they describe “the instrument that plays by itself.”

It was a flute with a rotating cylinder inside, which had pins that opened and closed the holes of the flute, thus leading to different notes and, ultimately, melodies. Besides the staggering fact that it was automated, it was also programmable. If you swapped the cylinder for a different one with pins in new places, you’d get a different song. When the first computers came to be, they too had swappable punch cards, which would set the program, so in essence, the brothers had come up with the first algorithmic machine over 1,000 years ago.

Incredible, isn’t it?

One part of why the brothers were able to come up with so many brilliant discoveries is that our brain is primed to look for innovation when we play. Two reasons: Every time we are surprised or find something new, we get a little hit of dopamine, which prompts us to want more surprises. Curiosity is addicting, and for once, that’s a good thing. Our minds are much more open when we play. We’re not as skeptical and put more trust into people and events, which allows our brains to make new connections in unknown ways. An industry that has benefitted tremendously from these two facts is the show business, specifically, the movie industry, since it developed out of our fascination with one of the many little errors in our brain: persistence of vision. Sometimes, when you stare at an object long enough, you can still see its frame or shadow for a while after it’s been removed. In the 19th century, the thaumatrope was created with this in mind. It’s a round piece of paper with two pictures that complement each other, one on each side, for example, a bird on the front and a cage on the back. If you attach a piece of string…