> That doesn't mean it will never happen. The world is changing rapidly, it stands to reason that even more big changes could happen.
Rapidly compared to what ? 1900-1960 arguably saw more significant cultural, technological and political change than 1960-2010. The internet and mobile phone are about the only significant technological breakthroughs in my lifetime - in fact even they happened before my lifetime, but were not commonplace yet.
> I think "human nature" is a bit of a red herring. We don't currently have any scientific way to separate how much of how people behave is social/environment programming and how much is "human nature".
Well, we do have millenia of recorded history. Social mores may change, human nature less so.
>The internet and mobile phone are about the only significant technological breakthroughs in my lifetime
I don't know if you've noticed but these two are having some very large impact in the world right now. Dictators of 30 and 40 years are being cast off.
>Well, we do have millenia of recorded history. Social mores may change, human nature less so.
I think that's a pretty skewed view of history. Another way to see it might be that we used to mostly have largely anarchistic/socialist societies that were overrun by a few greedy people and we've spent the rest of our history taking back our freedoms from the elite few of our day.
Now you could say that even if we ever managed to get to a utopia state more greedy people will just show up but I would counter argue that e.g. Alexander the great wouldn't have gotten off the ground if people could have just sent a twitter to warn everyone else what he was up to.
>> I don't know if you've noticed but these two are having some very large impact in the world right now. Dictators of 30 and 40 years are being cast off.
Unfortunately, revolutions are nothing new. Bigger revolutions happened in the past quite impactfully without such technologies. These technologies perhaps add benefit in the arms race to better organize against government's controls for infrastructure, institutions, and society.
>> I think that's a pretty skewed view of history. Another way to see it might be that we used to mostly have largely anarchistic/socialist societies that were overrun by a few greedy people and we've spent the rest of our history taking back our freedoms from the elite few of our day.
Now you could say that even if we ever managed to get to a utopia state more greedy people will just show up but I would counter argue that e.g. Alexander the great wouldn't have gotten off the ground if people could have just sent a twitter to warn everyone else what he was up to.
The same technology that people use for freedom, powers that be can use for more nefarious purposes. Technology in of itself is amoral and neutral. It's rather about who uses it more effectively. Today, the general populace perhaps has an advantage in that they're maybe more savvy than governments. Not necessarily will be the case all the time though. And besides that, it depends on whether people would love what Alexander stood for and would actually prefer to follow him. Look at what happened in Germany. Nobody better cite Godwin's Law here. Mein Kampf is seriously a great example of how a single idea, communication, or piece of media can rally the people to a cause that people in hindsight realized was incorrect. Technology can likewise be played by both sides.
> Unfortunately, revolutions are nothing new. Bigger revolutions happened in the past quite impactfully without such technologies.
3 major drivers of the European revolutions of the 1840s (the longest period of sustained, international revolutions in history) were newspapers, trains and telegraphs. Like today's internet, they were loosely controlled by the state. Information could pass from capital to capital within hours, sometimes within minutes.
The key dynamic is not the medium of transmission; it is whether the state has yet managed to control it.
> I don't know if you've noticed but these two are having some very large impact in the world right now. Dictators of 30 and 40 years are being cast off.
I'm sure the Jacobins had a totally cool Facebook page.
> Now you could say that even if we ever managed to get to a utopia state more greedy people will just show up but I would counter argue that e.g. Alexander the great wouldn't have gotten off the ground if people could have just sent a twitter to warn everyone else what he was up to.
That has to be the funniest thing I've read all day. If only poor King Darius III had a Twitter account.
>That has to be the funniest thing I've read all day. If only poor King Darius III had a Twitter account.
So you think that if the whole world would have been aware of what was happening they would have just sat back and watched? I think they would have all banded together to fight him at once rather than be picked off one at a time.
There's a strong motive to defect from cooperation, unfortunately. If 100 nations are discussing banding together to defend themselves, and everyone realizes it will only take 50 nations to repel an attack, then there is going to be a very strong incentive to be a free riding country.
Modern logistics (c.f. Walmart) is a hugely significant technological breakthrough, and is arguably the foundation of our modern economy. It's not obvious to consumers because it happened behind the scenes, but don't neglect it's significance.
Modern logistics developed mainly during the Second World War and post-war period, along with the computer revolution. My point is however that the last few decades have seen a refinement of more revolutionary changes in the first half of the twentieth century.
For example, from 1902 - 1960 we went from the Kitty Hawk to the jet passenger plane. From 1960 we went from the jet plane to .... ? We're still flying around in planes developed in the late 1960s/early 1970s. Sure, maybe they have better navigation systems, they might be safer and so on, but these are refinements rather than revolutionary changes.
So you're saying if any trend reaches an asymptote, technology is dead? Did you expect planes to be the size of skyscrapers by now? In any case the limiting factors there are economics, not technology. We could build a flying skyscraper, if we really wanted to.
In any case the standards of technology are always the thing that's changing the fastest. In the early 20th century, it was transport and chemistry. Today it's computing and biotechnology.
Physical laws and economic realities constrain technological progress. In the case of aircraft the possibilities allowed these laws and realities were exhausted in 60 years. No point being upset about it.
Rapidly compared to what ? 1900-1960 arguably saw more significant cultural, technological and political change than 1960-2010. The internet and mobile phone are about the only significant technological breakthroughs in my lifetime - in fact even they happened before my lifetime, but were not commonplace yet.
> I think "human nature" is a bit of a red herring. We don't currently have any scientific way to separate how much of how people behave is social/environment programming and how much is "human nature".
Well, we do have millenia of recorded history. Social mores may change, human nature less so.