There is this interesting old documentary with a similar premise called Connections by James Burke: (first episode) http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xnwpsp_veetle-connections-s...
It uses the 1965 New York power outage as starting point for the discussion on how modern society relies on technology and the consequences of a breakdown. It then goes through the technology tree from the humble plow all the way up to aerospace and how seemingly unrelated things cause us to end up in our current technological state (like how a excess of linnen lead to cheaper paper and widespread literacy).