Today, after researching the topic for the last couple of months, I submitted a new course proposal to the Stanford Continuing Studies program. Here's how I see it:

Course Title: The Greatest Innovations of All Times: Past, Present, and Future.

Course Description: This hands-on interactive course treats the current global crisis as a unique opportunity for breakthrough innovation. As it happened in the past, individuals, businesses, and societies that take advantage of such opportunities propel themselves to the next level of prosperity and growth. Our goal is to explore five areas that are essential to modern human endeavor: energy, information and communications, money and commerce, transportation, and health services. Each session of the class will be dedicated to a specific opportunity domain and have two parts. First, we will look at long-term technology and business trends. We will analyze how people solved seemingly insurmountable problems before and understand how and why original recipes for success turned into recipes for disaster over time. Secondly, we will use brainstorming and other creativity techniques to come up with solutions to today's critical problems, identify short- and long-term business/technology opportunities, and outline potential paths for breakthrough innovations.

The idea is ambitious, yet very simple. I am going to take the system model and trace the evolution of key fundamental functional elements from ancient to modern times, focusing on 100X disruptions. Here are my preliminary lines of attack:
1. Energy: Fire -> Horse/Oxen -> Water/Wind -> Steam Engine -> Electricity Generator -> Internal Combustion Engine -> Nuclear -> Solar (?).
2. Communications: Language -> Writing -> Printing -> Digital -> Fractal(?).
3. Money: Barter -> Shells -> Coins -> Promisory Notes -> Paper -> Electronic -> Derivatives/Futures -> Virtual (?).
4. Transportation: ( this will run somewhat parrallel to the Energy line, with emphasis on  carrying capacity, delivery precision, territory coverage, and speed). Wheel -> Road -> Navigation -> Maps -> Sattelites -> Virtual Worlds(?).
5. Health Services: Shaman -> Herbs -> Tools -> Doctors -> Alchemy -> Pharma -> Genetics -> Bio-cyber-augmentation(?).

Books for the course: Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jarred Diamond; The Back of the Napkin, by Dan Roam.