Now we have a roughly full chronology of Technical Boy evolution
(This is based on the info release by the Twitter account of American Gods and by Neil Gaiman in an interview)
The first incarnation of the technology god was “The Telegraph Boy”. A god created by, as his name indicate, the place the telegraph took into the American society, and the marvels it brought to the world. Given that the Telegraph Boy is probably not born the minute the telegraph was invented (he appeared only when the telegraph became a common and well-known technology used by everyone) I guess he appeared around the 1850s.
Then followed the Telephone Boy that we saw in Donar the Great, replacing the Telegraph Boy. I would say he probably appeared in the 1900s, when the telephone became a hit in the US.
Neil Gaiman mentionned the “Telephone Boy” as his new incarnation. I guess Television Boy appeared when television became the big stuff, in the 1950s. (I have to note that the inclusion of the Television Boy in here makes me wonder if the Telephone Boy didn’t had a hand in the radio technology too, another thing I thought was purely Media-related, but apparently Media and Technical Boy always coexisted together in a way).
Now, we get to the Technical Boy we all know and hated loved. I can’t remember if the show gave us an exact date for the Technical Boy “creation” but I guess it was between the 90s and the 2000s. What’s interesting is that before, apparently all of the incarnations of the Technological God were based on one main technology. Here, the Technical Boy embodies a ton of different technologies that, as a whole, changed human life. Computers and smartphones, video games and virtual reality, the Internet.The embodiment of the concept of “web life”.
And now, we have the new incarnation of Technical Boy - named Quantum Boy. I don’t know exactly what year the second season is supposed to be in, 2018 or 2019, I’ll have to check, but there he is. My guess for now is that he is the god of a higher type of technology, like nanotechnology and robotic. He seems also to be the god of all the fears surrounding technology and all the philosophies we created. The grey goo scenario. The AI running over the world. The self-aware robots. The computers more intelligent than human. The self-repairing machines. Transhumanism with all the questions, dangers, hopes and terrors it brings to the human race. A posthuman god. The deity of technological singularity.
Man... I can still remember the overweight acneic geek that Tech Boy was in the books... And now we get the Quantum Boy? He sure got a long way... I’m proud of ma boy!