The above image, which displays a mesmerizing swathe of esoteric technology, comes from a New York Times article that explains how IBM researcher Stuart P. Parkin is using nanomaterials in an attempt to create vastly improved electronic storage technologies and “to take microelectronics completely into the third dimension and thus explode the two-dimensional limits of Moore's Law.”

Although Parkin’s work is undoubtedly mind-boggling from a layperson’s perspective (how exactly do you “stand billions of ultrafine wire loops around the edge of a silicon chip”?), the report made me think back to a book I read a few months ago, The Shock of the Old by David Edgerton. In a provocative if flawed work, Edgerton argues that our fixation on innovation distracts us from understanding technology as it actually used. In other words, long after the media and popular prejudice consider a particular technology to be “obsolete,” it is still quietly puttering away, oftentimes produced and used in greater numbers than the product or process it has supposedly been replaced by. Edgerton’s book is replete with examples: for example, the number of bicycles produced is, even today, more than 2 1/2 times the number of cars manufactured. Back in World War II, the German war machine, epitomized by Blitzkrieg twins of the Stuka and Panzer, was largely horse-powered. (The 1941 invasion of the Soviet Union used more horses than the Grand Armée of 1812 and took longer to reach the outskirts of Moscow.)

Edgerton’s book is undermined by the fact that he never really develops his thesis, as he’s so busy jumping to the next did-you-know? example. (But those examples do keep you reading.) In addition, he never nails down what he means by “the old.” From his examples, the old could encompass the 19th century, early 20th century, and the decades after the Second World War. In other instances, the “old” label is applied to companies that are still around but associated with mature technologies (car companies are a primary example, but IBM, who are bankrolling Mr Parkin’s research, could also be ranked with the geezer corporations considering it was founded in 1889).

At this moment the world’s economy is looking considerably shakier than it did even a month ago. Of the two main causes of this weakness, one is prehistoric, the other merely very, very old. The first danger is oil–the residue of “ancient sunlight”–now threatening to become a real issue at $80 a barrel. The “knowledge” economy, with its thirsty server farms, international conferences, and SUV-driving consultants, does not run solely on hot air and Starbucks.

Second, the 21st-century credit crisis centred on the United States stems from a collapse in the housing market–and the first ever real-estate slump probably occurred in the city of Ur when a speculator built too many mud-brick huts with a view of the Ziggurat.

As a civilization, it seems, we may now be able to wrap a billion wires around a chip smaller than a postage stamp, but we are still in thrall to the same forces that were already wearily familiar when great-grandparents complained about them.