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Are we living on the hinge of history?


Valin

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I'm sure TTR's know of my love (obsession) of history. This is going to be an ongoing series of videos and articles purposing the idea that we are at one of these points. I would hope others here partake in this, or at a minimum allow this view to influence your views on politics and culture.

I would also add, not being a man of the written word, I have not (yet) been able to put this into so many words.

 

Where did this start?

Forward to 7: 45

"I believe we are living on the hinge of history, on the cusp of history.

And it's, it happens no more frequently than every hundred years, sometimes every five hundred years, and we are so in the middle of this symbolically new century, new millennium, really new economic age, information versus industry or machines, and a new, a new order in the world uh, to pla...replace the old cold war order."

 

(Aside:

)

 

 

Three more Vids I found today

 

You're gonna be shocked...it's Newt. For purposes of this thread I am not pushing Gingrich, I use him only to point out what kind of change we have experienced so far, and where we could be going

 

 

 

This talk was part of ISU class called, "Technology, Globalization, and Culture (ME/WLC 484/584)". During the course of the semester student learning will be facilitated through a variety of interactions, including: presentations by leading professionals from business, industry, cultural institutions, and academia who confront the challenges of globalization in both theory and practice, readings and research on global issues, threaded discussions on a thematic focus (weekly), critical analysis of presentations and readings, and student project teams which will identify, research, develop, and present a course project.

 

 

Now Andrew Breitbart 2005. In listening to this, I ask you not think of the politics of hollywood. That is not why I am using this, instead think of how the technological changes that are happening will affect the entertainment (and sports which is entertainment) industry.

 

 

My grandmother was born in 1865 died in 1958. When she was born the way most people lived had not changed in any fundamental way in 300-400(?) years, when she died the changes had started. Since then, for better or worse the world she knew is a thing of the far distant past. 30 years ago (say) nickydog and I could not have had the conversations we have had She being in Co. and I in Mn., the technology while it existed, was just new born, today it has changed...well everything. 30 years ago if you were a person who was really into politics you subscribed to Newsweek or Time or if you really had no life US News and World Report. On the Left The Nation, The Village Voice, on the right National Review, Human Events, today, the sources available to us the great unwashed are greater than The MSM had in 1982.

 

Enough of my rambling. I hope this is of some use

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This is good, @Valin! Thank you for taking the time to put it together. I look forward to more. It is hard to see that we are living on the hinge of history when you are in the middle of it, but more interesting to see it if it's possible.

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This good, @Valin! Thank you for taking the time to put it together. I look forward to more. It is hard to see that we are living on the hinge of history when you are in the middle of it, but more interesting to see it if it's possible.

 

Someone living in 16th century Saxony said the same thing.

As I said that one little thing that Gray Hart said caused the light bulb to go on. Now I could be wrong, but while I haven't yet gotten it all straight in my head..(25 words or less), I think I may be on to something. We've got the rise of the digital revolution, globalism, the financial crisis (We're broke), changes in how families operate & the break down of societal norms...and something is happening. If I am correct the next 100 years are going to be very...interesting, and not always in a good way (see the 30 years war right around 1/3 of the Germans were dead at the end of it.).

 

Have a nice day!

 

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American Challenges: The Blue Model Breaks Down

Walter Russell Mead

1/28/10

 

Here in the quiet precincts of the stately Mead manor in exclusive Queens, as the dew gently falls over the mist-shrouded lawns and the pigeons coo soothingly from the historic-landmarked eaves, it is sometimes hard to believe, but out there in the workaday world the long and graceful decay of the American social model is accelerating into a more rapid and dangerous decline. The core institutions, ideas and expectations that shaped American life for the sixty years after the New Deal don’t work anymore, and the gaps between the social system we’ve inherited and the system we need today are becoming so wide that we can no longer paper them over or ignore them.

 

In the old system, both blue collar and white collar workers hold stable jobs, a professional career civil service administers a growing state, with living standards for all social classes steadily rising while the gaps between the classes remain fairly stable, and with an increasing ‘social dividend’ being paid out in various forms: longer vacations, more and cheaper state-supported education, earlier retirement, shorter work weeks and so on. Graduate from high school and you were pretty much guaranteed lifetime employment in a job that gave you a comfortable lower middle class lifestyle; graduate from college and you would be better paid and equally secure.

 

Life would just go on getting better. From generation to generation we would live a life of incremental improvements — the details of life would keep getting better but the broad outlines of our society would stay the same. The advanced industrial democracies of had in fact reached the ‘end of history’: this is what ‘developed’ human society looked like and there would be no more radical changes because the picture had fully developed.

 

Call this the blue model, and the chief division in American politics today is between those who think the blue model is the only possible or at least the best feasible way to organize a modern society and want to shore it up and defend it, and those who think the blue model, whatever benefits it had in the past, is no longer sustainable.

 

That division is going to begin to erode in the next few years because the blue model is breaking down so fast and so far that not even its supporters can ignore the disintegration and disaster that it entails.

 

(Snip)

 

(Note: Walter Russel Mead...get used to that name as I'll be using his writings a great deal.)

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"Are living on the hinge of history?If so what does it mean?"

 

@Valin Thank you.

 

Changes in technology is the item of interest for Newt. Breitbart takes a broader (better IMHO) approach and Walter Russell Mead expands. In terms of the intellectual level of the conversations or writing, I'd put Newt at a junior high level while the latter two are operating at the college grad level.

 

Current changes in technology are way overrated. Human desires have not changed but societal norms that have have curbed aberrant behaviors are disappearing. In that sense, technology has exacerbated this decline in norms.

 

Add David P Goldman AKA Spengler to your reading list. Here he is: Spengler

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"Are living on the hinge of history?If so what does it mean?"

 

@Valin Thank you.

 

Changes in technology is the item of interest for Newt. Breitbart takes a broader (better IMHO) approach and Walter Russell Mead expands. In terms of the intellectual level of the conversations or writing, I'd put Newt at a junior high level while the latter two are operating at the college grad level.

 

Current changes in technology are way overrated. Human desires have not changed but societal norms that have have curbed aberrant behaviors are disappearing. In that sense, technology has exacerbated this decline in norms.

 

Add David P Goldman AKA Spengler to your reading list. Here he is: Spengler

 

Re Newt. That may be true, but he is one of the few national level politicians who is t taking a long view.

Too many politicians and pundits only talk about the next election, (understandable) but I think they are missing the forest for the trees.

 

PS I'd ask that people ignore who is saying this and pay attention to what is being said.

My purpose in this thread is not really politics. It's (I'm not sure how to put this)...its 30,000' stuff. Think about what someone in 150-200 years writing a broad history of the late 20th early 21st century, what would they say.

 

I don't believe the technological changes are being over rated. If anything I think the are under rated. While it is true human nature doesn't change, the way we live relate to society changes when there are major technological changes, see the moveable type, people's nature didn't change but how they lived their lives did. All of a sudden people had access to cheap readily available information...compared to hand written manuscripts.

 

As I posted earlier "My grandmother was born in 1865 died in 1958. When she was born the way most people lived had not changed in any fundamental way in 300-400(?) years, when she died the changes had started."

 

Thanks for Spengler. I'm adding it to my bookmarks.

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A. Hate The Title Of This!

B. For purposes of this thread forward to 4:20

Professor and blogger Walter Russell Mead joins Glenn Reynolds to discuss Obama's first term. Since Obama's election, the anti-war movement has evaporated, yet America continues to wage war. Can Obama continue to wage war without offending his base? Find out. Plus, Walter Mead discusses the education bubble, and the slow death of America's professional class.

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pollyannaish

@pollyannaish

 

Not sure if you've read this thread, but this is what I am talking about when I say changes are coming.

 

Yep! Been following these posts...and thank you. I've actually subscribed to the idea of major structural/financial changes in the world and specifically in our economy for about five years now. A lot of this was based out of research I did for a class I taught for technology and society when I was an instructor.

 

Good stuff. It is going to happen, and it is going to happen with great pain. Just like it has before.

 

Hope you will keep posting here!

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I have a lot of catching up to do here. It's good stuff and I want to do it justice. Tomorrow is going to be a cold day so I hope to get everything watched/read as I will be indoors and home all day. Looking forward to it!

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From what little I've read and watched, interesting, going to have to come back and take my time reading and listening to all of it. Thanks for putting it together

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@nickydog @cudjo

 

What I am hoping for is people not just reading this, but contributing, articles Vids...etc.

 

What I would really like to see is push on my thesis, that we are in the middle of a major change in history.

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@Valin

 

IMHO the US is faced with the prospect of a major destructive change - but worldwide we might just be joining an infamous list.

 

From WIkipedia

 

By Reversion/Simplification

* Hittite Empire

* Mycenaean Greece

* The Neo-Assyrian Empire

* Indus Valley Civilization

* Mauryan and Gupta states

* Angkor civilization of the Khmer Empire

* Han and Tang Dynasty of China

* Anasazi

* Western Roman Empire, Decline of the Roman Empire

* Izapa

* Maya, Classic Maya collapse

* Munhumutapa Empire

* Olmec

 

By Incorporation/Absorption

 

* Sumer

* Ancient Egypt

* Babylonia

* Etruscans

* Ancient Levant

* Classical Greece

* Dacians

* Eastern Roman Empire (Medieval Greek) of the Byzantines

* Modern North East Asian civilisations, Hindu and Mughal India

* Qin, Song, Mongol and Qing China

* Tokugawa Shogunate of Japan, ending with the Meiji Restoration

* Aztecs and Incas

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@Valin

 

What I am talking about is not so much the destruction of a civilization/empire. When Mycenaean Greece died and the dark ages started, the way people lived did.

 

What I am taking as a model is the end of the Medieval period, in a (historically speaking) short period of time we had A. moveable type (cheap knowledge) the Protestant Reformation freeing people from the lock(?) The Church had on thought, leading to the Counter Reformation, and Columbus setting sail. All of a sudden (once again historically speaking) we have a whole new world, a whole new way of looking as how we live, what is our relationship vertically (to God and to the king) and horizontally to each other..just because your family has been farmers for generations no longer meant you had to be.

 

Did that make any sense? I ask because I really am still in the process of working this out. Lord knows Not being all that bright I need all the help I can get.

 

I don't see a lot of people writing about this, at least not in any major way. What I would really like to find is some writing that says I am wrong, and the changes I'm seeing are not leading to a new way of living.

 

 

Thank you for pointing out non western civilizations/empires! I have not factored that into my thinking. A major mistake on my part. I don't know that much about (say) Angkor civilization of the Khmer Empire.

What can I say except...More new stuff to learn...oh boy!

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April 7 1953 IBM's first commercially available scientific computer is made available to the public.

 

IBM 701 Electronic Data Processing Machine

 

April 29, 1952 --- IBM President Thomas J. Watson, Jr., informed his company's stockholders at the annual meeting that IBM was building "the most advanced, most flexible high-speed computer in the world." Known as the Defense Calculator while in development, the new machine emerged from the IBM Poughkeepsie Laboratory later that year and was formally unveiled to the public on April 7, 1953 as the IBM 701 Electronic Data Processing Machines.

 

The first IBM large-scale electronic computer manufactured in quantity;

IBM's first commercially available scientific computer;

The first IBM machine in which programs were stored in an internal, addressable, electronic memory;

Developed and produced in record time -- less than two years from "first pencil on paper" to installation;

Key to IBM's transition from punched-card machines to electronic computers; and

The first of the pioneering line of IBM 700 series computers, including the 702, 704, 705 and 709.

 

Continue

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Short term changes, but still worth looking at, in context of the larger changes we are in the middle of.

 

]
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pollyannaish

My area of interest in the cultural changes we face in this country, and for that matter the world, is specifically related to communications.

 

This is a terrific talk from Eli Pariser discussing the gatekeepers on the internet and how that could impact our world in negative ways. It's well worth the 9 minutes you spend on it.

 

http://www.ted.com/t...er_bubbles.html

 

I tried to embed it, but wasn't sure how to do so.

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pollyannaish

One note: I think it is profoundly important that conservatives are aware of this. Valin is absolutely right about our side knowing what is coming, what is happening and engaging in it.

 

Whoever "futzes" with the gatekeeping owns the conversation and we can not cede that wholly to anyone. Even ourselves.

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My area of interest in the cultural changes we face in this country, and for that matter the world, is specifically related to communications.

This is a terrific talk from Eli Pariser discussing the gatekeepers on the internet and how that could impact our world in negative ways. It's well worth the 9 minutes you spend on it.

http://www.ted.com/t...er_bubbles.html]Eli Pariser: Beware online "filter bubbles"

I tried to embed it, but wasn't sure how to do so.


I don't believe TED Embeds.
I just added the title.

I just learned something. I always assumed the net was pretty much neutral in its architecture.

Also cultural changes not just here but worldwide are a very large part of the change I believe we are in the middle of. some of this is good some bad. In many way it is the most important aspect.
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