在当代关于人工智能颠覆职场的焦虑声中，人们往往忽视了技术革新淘汰特定劳动的历史必然性与积极意义。在维多利亚时代的伦敦，“掏粪工”（gong farmers）曾从事清理人类粪坑并将其贩卖给农户的艰辛行当，而下水道管网与现代化泵站的兴建彻底消除了这一职业。英国《新政客》专栏作家乔恩·埃利奇（Jonn Elledge）在新著《造就我们世界的31项发明》中指出，现代城市生活建立在下水道、人行横道、街道网格和窗户等一系列看似平平无奇的隐形工程技术之上，正是这些发明的巨大成功，使得人们对其司空见惯乃至视作理所当然。
该书以生动翔实的历史掌故梳理了城市核心基础设施漫长的演进历程。1863年1月伦敦开通了全球首条地下铁道，而第二座拥有地铁的城市布达佩斯则在33年之后才姗姗来迟；在维多利亚时期的伦敦和纽约，一辆单人马车每天就会产生约三分之一吨的马粪；而1857年安装在纽约百货商店内的全球首台通用电梯，其运行速度仅为每秒20厘米。这些一度颠覆时人认知的前沿发明，在历经数十甚至数百年的技术迭代与网络化普及后，最终融入了现代都市的运转血脉。
埃利奇将这些塑造现代文明的发明归为两大类：第一类是早已内化为生活常理的基础规范，例如1708年伦敦普雷斯科特街（Prescot Street）首次引入的门牌编号制度，它终结了过去依靠粗鄙个人特征定位住址的混乱时代；第二类则是经历漫长渐进改良后化为无形的材料奇迹，例如采光窗户从最初透光微弱的猪膀胱薄膜，逐步演进为石灰石和纯碱熔炼的平板玻璃，再到如今隔热隔音的双层中空玻璃。这些昔日唯有极少数显贵才能享用的尖端技术，如今已普及至整个人类社会，成为现代文明最不可或缺的隐形基石。
Amid widespread modern anxiety regarding artificial intelligence and technological unemployment, history demonstrates that labor-displacing innovations frequently represent profound civilizational progress. In Victorian London, "gong farmers" endured hazardous labor manually clearing cesspools until Joseph Bazalgette’s revolutionary sewer and pumping networks made the trade obsolete. In his book "31 Inventions that Built Our World", New Statesman writer Jonn Elledge observes that modern urban existence rests on an array of extraordinary yet invisible technologies—including drainage systems, street grids, and glass panes—whose sheer ubiquity has obscured their radical engineering genius.
Elledge illuminates the protracted historical adoption trajectories of foundational urban systems through striking historical vignettes. London inaugurated the world's first subterranean passenger railway in January 1863, yet 33 years elapsed before Budapest established the second. Prior to widespread mechanisation, a single horse-drawn transit omnibus in 19th-century New York or London deposited roughly a third of a tonne of manure daily, while the earliest commercial passenger elevator, installed in a Manhattan department store in 1857, crept upward at a sluggish 20 centimetres per second. The incremental standardisation of these systems ultimately enabled high-density urban agglomeration.
The treatise distinguishes two primary classes of urban innovation: institutional conventions so deeply embedded they appear natural, and cumulative materials engineering triumphs. The former is illustrated by the formal numbering of houses, pioneered on London’s Prescot Street in 1708, which superseded erratic descriptive postal addresses like "To my sister Jean... she has a wooden leg." The latter is embodied by architectural windows, which progressed from translucent stretched pig bladders to soda-lime sheet glass, and ultimately to contemporary mass-manufactured double glazing. Once exclusive luxuries restricted to elite dynasties, these invisible technologies now seamlessly underpin global metropolitan life.
Source: Urban life rests on invisible, extraordinary technology
Subtitle: A new book explores the invaluable inventions you rarely think about
Dateline: Sep 10th 2026