Historically:

nature worship -> divinity -> shamanism -> religion -> civilization ->
dynasties -> law -> state -> empires -> rationalism -> material culture
-> mercantilism -> slavery -> morality -> monotheism -> christianity ->
ideological culture -> knowledge -> science -> capitalism -> industry ->
globalization -> neoliberalism -> ...

Economically:

gift -> trade -> gold -> debt -> banks -> paper notes -> central banks
-> fiat -> bretton woods -> petrodollar -> gold standard -> market
supremacy -> global crisis -> cryptocurrency -> ...

Media:

faithful copy of an original -> perverted copy -> abstract copy (as in
mass production) -> pure simulation in late capitalism (e.g. "the
singularity")

But we should be careful as programmers not to place too much faith in
this kind of deductive reasoning because it can fool us into thinking
the world is a clockwork machine or a computer model when our world is
powered by narrative and ideology, more so than we realize.