> I don't know WHY, but I keep wondering how I would go about explaining a computer to Benjamin Franklin, if I went back in time, grabbed him, and brought him back here. I'm sure I'd work "This piece of machinery is your fault" in there somewhere.
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> I'm posting about this because I'd like to hear what everyone else has to say (either about how they'd go about doing this themselves or about the thought itself, which, by the way, has been annoying me for MORE THAN TWO YEARS) and to see if it somehow chases the thought out of my head. Hey, it could work.

I think it would be pretty easy to explain any kind of modern technology to somebody like Benjamin Franklin. Or to any intelligent, educated person with an avid curiosity and an open mind from the 19th century, the 17th century, or even the 14th for that matter. I mean, to pick a modern piece of technology at random, a couple of years ago I had never heard of cochlear implants for deaf people, but the fact that I had never imagined such a thing, or had any training in the technology which created it, didn't stop me from understanding the concept and the basics of how it works and what it does.

Any form of technology existing today is just a mechanism made by humans, and an ability to grasp technology doesn't magically change just because of the time you live in. For example, here I am in 2003, an educated modern person, and I sure as heck couldn't build you a railway bridge, even though I assume we have far better technology to do so now than they did in 1830. However, if you brought Isambard Brunel here from 1830 and tried to explain how people build railway bridges nowadays, I'm pretty sure he'd pick it up in a weekend.

Personally, I can't explain a computer to anybody *today*, if you're talking about sitting somebody down and describing exactly what makes a computer work right down to the electronic level. However, I could certainly describe what it's for and how to use it, and I have a sneaking suspicion that somebody with a mind like Franklin's would pick it up faster than I did anyway.