I understand not every decade was a clean break, but each decade has fairly distinct defining properties. It feels like most of the 21st century has been a single run on with smaller changes. I know sometimes the definitions don’t come into focus until later, but I’ve been around since the 80s and I can distinctly remember the changes between the 80s, 90s and 00s as they were happening.
I think there are a few different dimensions of this, all combining to blur the view:
the probably beginning around Newton cascade of Industrial Revolutions ( in different industries! ) is still accelerating.
Coal+steel+steam was 1 of them.
Telegraph meant information could travel FAST long-distances, then wireless took it farther…
computers began automating things, then began enabling calculations which hadn’t even been possible…
aviation ensmallening the world ( if embiggen is a word, then so is that! : )
but what happens when there are sooo many transformations, CRT’s with their lead-glass to reduce people’s X-Ray exposure, now into flat-panels…
genetic-testing all over the place…
lighting no longer being incandescent…
EV’s all over the place…
it isn’t that change isn’t happening, it is that the equilibriums aren’t happening!
It’s ALL punctuation, continuously-rolling, now!
So, accelerating change, is part of what’s going on…
TWO. the view: we’re IN the maelstrom, & therefore can’t see the forest for the trees!
I recently went into a city, to ( fail ) to get ID, & … everybody was on these weird scooter-ebikes?
When the hell did THAT happen?
I’ve only been out from cities for … 15y?
Obviously, it happened sometime in the intervening 1.5-decades, but … that’s fairly distinct!
So now there’s 2 overlaid public-transport systems: bus-routes covering the arteries of the city, & those rentable-everywhere scooter-ebike thingies, for all the point-to-point travel…
Brilliant!
I wish it’d been in-place decades ago.
THREE. consider that part of what makes distinct decades distinct, is identity … & consider that in the current world, dividing-and-conquering everybody by identity, through software-enforcement ( Facebook, etc ) is making much of our world invisible, physically: it’s ONLY in those platforms.
So, it isn’t even in your, or my, view, to be seeing what the world really is, anymore!
Concealment ( for divide-and-conquer purposes ) is growing more ideology-polarization.
Don’t worry: it’ll be as clear as Russia-vs-Ukraina, in a short while, globally…
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