The way things are going . . .

[crispy47]

I attended a lecture at National Taiwan Normal University the other day. The French department hosted a French scholar to gloss Italian history. I didn't really learn much new, but listening to him talk about these movements in art and thought that lasted hundreds of years, I thought of something strange: Imagine being born into a word that was

Comments

[andytsai]

I always thought of myself as being born a hundred years too late. I look back to the time of major change where ideology was in harmony with action and I think that I would've fit in well with that. Now there is still ideology, but it one of skeptical doubt.

I think, as you said, we are still firmly rooted as being part of the 'modern' period, it really seems as if these liberal democracies are the "end of history". For me, looking at it at this point in time, it seems hard to imagine another revolution, even if technology became far more advanced than it is now. I think people tend to overestimate the power of technology to instigate social change. Sure, most people have access to computers, the internet, and can travel virtually anywhere in the world, but the social impact is not revolutionary. In the past, people communicated through snail mail, huge bureaucracies used paperwork (as is still the case) and took boats to get around the world.

[crispy47]

I wasn't just talking about technological change instigating social change. I was thinking more of technological and scientific advancement as their own ends. I mean, if it's 1300 and you're some farmer somewhere, you're probably not going to really think much about change, because there isn't so much change, because the changes there are don't necessarily affect you, and because you don't even have much of a way to learn about them.

On the other hand, we expect there to constantly be new technologies and new discoveries. At least for me, it's part of the way I think about the world-as a place where things new things are constantly being built and found out. And yet I'm continually amazed. I continually find myself say, "Well I'll be. What'll they think of next?" as though I expect people to stop thinking of things. But they never will; this is just the way things are now. This is what I find strange, and that's what I was talking about as something we should get used to