Economic misery and turmoil through war are not new to the 21st century, and the fact that we did not achieve unending prosperity through an Internet-based economy or eternal peace through the end of the cold war should come as a surprise to none but the most naive of observers of human nature.
This decade was no more "lost" than was the generation that followed the "war to end all wars." Both labels arise from those who placed unbounded hopes in human potential only to discover that the drivers in this world can often be as malevolent as they can be good.
Will the information age change any of this, as the authors imply? There is much good that indeed comes from having the interconnectedness of instant worldwide communication and of social networks and the like. But, if someone is going to argue that this will alter centuries of human experience that has been bedeviled by the bad as well as the good, he will have to come up with something far more convincing than the headline-level analysis and naive hope in new political structures that the authors seem to espouse as the basis for our future hope.
Comments
Economic misery and turmoil through war are not new to the 21st century, and the fact that we did not achieve unending prosperity through an Internet-based economy or eternal peace through the end of the cold war should come as a surprise to none but the most naive of observers of human nature.
This decade was no more "lost" than was the generation that followed the "war to end all wars." Both labels arise from those who placed unbounded hopes in human potential only to discover that the drivers in this world can often be as malevolent as they can be good.
Will the information age change any of this, as the authors imply? There is much good that indeed comes from having the interconnectedness of instant worldwide communication and of social networks and the like. But, if someone is going to argue that this will alter centuries of human experience that has been bedeviled by the bad as well as the good, he will have to come up with something far more convincing than the headline-level analysis and naive hope in new political structures that the authors seem to espouse as the basis for our future hope.