I never meant to imply that one person understood the whole technology system (that's truly absurd), rather that each individual component was designed and implemented intentionally and it's likely that each niche in the industry had at least one person who truly understood it.

Now, take that paradigm and compare it to natural science: No one anywhere ever had any understanding of the system, and now we look at the end result of a constantly changing system and try to ascertain everything from how it works today to how it all began.

I apologize, I could have been more clear in my original post, sorry!