Aspies For Freedom

How would you explain credit cards or the internal combustion engine to Aristotle, or explain the Internet to Thomas Edison?  Is my alternate history interest running away?

I've actually thought about this before. Analogies to water would be the logical way thing like electricity.

well... it would invalve the word "magic" ALOT.... it would be like... you swipe the magic flexible object thought the card reader, and magicly you become a little less rich...

This brings to mind an episode of Star Trek Next Generation in which the crew became accidentally involved with a primitive culture.  The people came to believe that Captain Picard was a god.  Picard tried to explain his advanced technology by relating how the people's current technology (bows & arrows) might be mistaken as magical and god-like by an even more primitive culture with more primitive technology (sticks & stones).  

But there was one man who refused to believe that Picard was not a god.  So to prove his mortality, Picard took a dramatic shot in the chest from a bow and arrow, sacrificing his life for sake of the prime directive.  Of course, this was nothing 24th century medicine couldn't handle, and Picard survived.
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Along the lines of GuessWho's time travel fantasy thread, it is interesting to think what the local people would think if you could reproduce modern technology in primitive times.  Suppose you went back to various times and created A. G. Bell's telephone.  In 1800 to 1875, you would be a genius.  In the 1600's, you would be a witch.  In medieval Europe, you would be a wizard.  Any time before that, depending on the culture, you would either be worshiped as a god or a killed as a demon.  
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If I could explain a certain technology to someone in the past, I would explain the steam engine to Heron of Alexandria (10 - 70 AD).  He actually created the first steam powered device, though he made it as a novelty item rather than a source of mechanical power.  The ancient roman empire was so close to an industrial revolution, but cheap and plentiful slave labor may have made mechanized power unnecessary.  If they had adopted steam power, there's no telling where we might be nowadays.  We (we the human race, not we particular individuals who would not exist) would probably be traveling around bases on the Moon, Mars, Europa, and Enceladus, while Earth recovers from a nuclear holocaust.  
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The fabulous science-fiction author Arthur C. Clarke once wrote " Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."

Sorta sums it up.  

Tonic, do you mean Heron's ball? Yes, probably the most "bizarre" invention of the antics. I wonder if Heron came to the idea of a steam machine but decided not to realize it - or if he didnt come to that idea.

Yes, Heron's ball.  A quick check on Wikipedia reveals it's called an aeolipile.

That is precisely the scenario suggested by a documentary of Heron on the History Channel.  Either he never realized the true capabilities of steam power, or perhaps he did realize the capabilities, but did not pursue them in favor of cheap and plentiful slave labor.

I guess those people had such high intellectual capacities that they would understand it anyway, when exposed to them and the learning material. Something tells me both Aristotle and Edison were people who would've obsessively sucked up the substantial new knowledge generated since their deaths.

But perhaps you mean, since this is theoretical anyway, how would you put it in terms that they would understand immediately, without access to twenty-first century knowledge? I truly don't know. I'm not sure I know how an internal combustion engine works, so that's a harder nut to crack than the internet. Perhaps by showing the concept of hypertext, and then sketching up the idea of a computing machine, and its links to other computing machines, and the idea that code could turn them into two-way communicators that could trasfer information, much of it in the earlier explained hypertext format. Hmm.

I think it's an interesting challenge, so no, your alternate history interest isn't running away, at least not in this instance.