Five Centuries of History
I keep noticing this – five centuries of history, from the 15th through the 19th Centuries, the most important centuries in history, the era of the Modern world, have been carefully ignored as though they never happened.
I got a new book today, hot off the press – Too Big to Know: rethinking knowledge now that the facts aren’t the facts, experts are everywhere, and the smartest person in the room is the room. This is a brilliant analysis of our information/networked world. To my way of thinking it has one fault – it is five centuries too late; or at the very least, two centuries too late, if we reset our clocks to the beginning of the Industrial Revolution.
The author, David Weinberger, does not ask himself why most of the people in the room will not read his book. He just assumes we don’t want to talk about how the masses do not matter.
I must be smarter than everyone, or dumber than everyone – or both, to insist on going back and looking at how technology flooded our consciousness, and created mass man.
I may be smarter or dumber, or both, but that doesn’t matter. I am being ignored just as five centuries of history have been.
I’m not ignoring you, when you say it all its a bit difficult to answer. My awakening came at an early age, “A Child’s History of England”, Though the bias on it was evident even then.
I stand corrected. I have not been totally ignored.
Indeed, with your awareness of Northern European history, and presumably your awareness of Southern European (including Latin American) history, you are in a good situation to understand the whole mess.