I still remember 1 Jan 2000. There did seem to be some sense of optimism about where things could go. At least for those of us lucky enough to live in stable, developed countries.
Cold war over, Russia and The West seemingly on the same side, China opening up, exciting new tech connecting us but no toxic social media yet...
But then... the dot com bust, 9/11, the GFC, toxic social media and the rise of "the algorithm", Xi in China, Putin in Russia, a global pandemic......
Didn't really go where we hoped, can we restore to a backup from 1999 and try again??
The Matrix described 1999 as the
peak of human civilization and I
laughed because that would
obviously not age well but then
the next 23 years happened and
now l'm like yeah okay maybe the
machines had a point
And people wrote articles like this. And it wasn't even completely ridiculous. And I still believe the world would be very different today if GWB hadn't "won" the election.
Well, the events of 9/11/2001 were a pivotal moment in the united state's national consciousness. That was a traumatic event for the country; our national self esteem changed. The world became more of a scary place.
70's for total quality of life, then we increased in digital quality of life while everything else fell then we increased in network quality of life but everything else fell. seems like the matrix any day now.
I'm afraid the human race won't live long enough to reach "peak civilization" as that would mean that the successful ones take everyone else along with them to the top. That isn't likely to happen before the successful ones take us all down to extinction.