I had to read the book a couple of times before I completely understood this, but I'm pretty sure there's an implicit metaphor that ties the two plots together, and it's about the feedback between technological progress and intelligence, and how physical constraints (or accidents of evolution) limit progress. The society of the Tines is constrained by their peculiar path to sentience - they can't split up pack members and they can't co-mingle packs without losing coherence. From their perspective, early 20th century electronics are the equivalent of neural prosthetics, and might as well be gifts from the Transcend.
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