There
is a little game that has been played many times. It may seem silly,
but it can help to put things in perspective. Take an extended period
of time and pretend it’s a day. We could date the origins of
mankind to about a million years ago. But for the purpose of this
exercise we can choose a much shorter period.
If
we set the beginning of the Paleolithic era at approximately 40
thousand years ago, and start the day at that time, we find the use
of metals at 9 PM. Archimedes is born at 10.40 PM – Leonardo da
Vinci an hour later, twenty minutes before midnight. The entire
industrial evolution, even if we date it from the 1300s, is in the
last half hour.
Steam
engines appear at 11.51 PM. The experimental use of electricity
starts at 11.53 PM – electric light and power two or three minutes
later. Telegraph begins six minutes before midnight. Telephone,
movies, the motorcar and the airplane around four minutes ago, radio
three minutes, atomic energy and television two minutes. The
prototype of electronic computers came two minutes before our time,
the internet one minute(but it has been widely available only in the
last twenty seconds.) Mobile phones have existed for two minutes, but
their obsessive spreading is in the last ten seconds.
The
important problem isn’t the speed of change – that has no
constant or predictable pattern. It’s the fact that many things
have been around for a very short time (including some that may seem
“old”, but aren’t, compared to the evolution of human culture.)
The biological roots, and largely also the cultural attitudes, of our
species, haven’t changed much since the age of cave dwellers.
It’s
no surprise to find that we haven’t had the time to learn how to
use the resources that we have – or the variety and speed of
communication that were unknown for 99 percent of our history even if
we date it only from the beginning of writing.
Now
we have understood that the enthusiasm for the marvels of progress,
back in the 1800s, was naïve. We know that technical development
can’t solve all problems – and it can cause new, sometimes
dramatic, difficulties and damages. But we still have a lot to learn.
by
Giancarlo Livraghi
Credit: The header image
is available as wallpaper from wall.alphacoders.com
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