When the final history is written, what will have killed Western civilization? The collapse of religion, perhaps? The infection of healthy capitalism with a terminal case of greed? Or will it have been a plague of historians who try to dress up their lectures by sprinkling them with Internet age jargon?

Yes, Niall Ferguson is back on PBS with another condensed-book version of one of his own works, “Civilization: The West and the Rest,” which was published last year.

The program, taking the same title, is presented in two-hour installments this Tuesday and next, and by the time it’s over, you will have heard Mr. Ferguson call his six essentials of Western dominance “killer apps” about a thousand times. (See, smartphone-using young people, history is relevant to you!) He’d better hope the term doesn’t have as short a shelf life as, say, “floppy disk,” or this program is going to sound awfully silly in a few years.

Mr. Ferguson, a Harvard professor, posits that six attributes other cultures didn’t have or couldn’t master have allowed the West to dominate in recent centuries: competition, science, democracy, medicine, consumerism and the work ethic. He travels all over the globe so that he can deliver what is essentially a lecture in front of relevant backdrops.