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Comment by kaycebasques | Hacker News Reader

On a tangential note, it really feels like we continue to live in a historic time. Maybe it's a completely personal experience but it just seems like so many basic societal assumptions are getting meaningfully challenged or brought into focus. The pandemic panic and subsequent lockdowns focused our relationships with other humans. The racism protests also. The "inner temple" of the US empire getting breached/"violated" focused thought around the existing global political order. Remote work and these supposed waves of resignations focusing thought around capitalism (as mentioned in other comments I'm on a 1-year sabbatical as of this month [1] and know a few people doing or considering the same so I definitely think there is possible truth to the story). All of these things have been bubbling for a long time, no doubt, but the focus on each one seems more intense lately.

[1] https://kayce.basqu.es/sabbatical/prologue

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Aren't all times historic? What would you consider the least historic decade?

A decade is too big of a window. It's tough to pick one decade over another but I do think I could pick one year out of every decade over the others. To put my thought another way, if you think of society as a system, you've got a short period where the rules are being changed, and then we let the system run its course for multiple years. Eventually there are some gross inefficiencies that become too big to ignore and we have another short period where the rules are changed again, and so on.

>A decade is too big of a window.

I think that it's too small. Consider the swathes of time that are examined in history books.

It all looks amazing and fast moving when you are living it, particularly when you are younger.

The rate of technological advancement is growing exponentially, so the duration of an 'era' is becoming compressed.

You know, that's a great discussion to have at another time.

Is it growing exponentially? Personally, I'd say that changes at the margin are becoming smaller. I think that the difference between 1940-1980 is much greater than 1980-2020.

As an aside, it's funny how static music has been for years. There are numerous bands that sound like they would have been reasonably successful in 1970 (and visa versa). 1920 vs 1970 is a whole 'nother issue.

> I think that the difference between 1940-1980 is much greater than 1980-2020.

I vehemently disagree with this, but agree this is veering off topic, so I'll leave it at that.

Would you agree that 2020-2021 was a more interesting period of time than 2018-2019?

"In some decades, nothing happens. In some weeks, decades happen."

Agree and it's hard to find cohesive takes which stitch together all these events in a way that make sense, i.e. the analysis includes enough tech-awareness to believe it.

The only stuff I've found which felt in the ballpark of spot-on were:

1) https://studio.ribbonfarm.com/p/the-great-weirding This was a fascinating series of essays that generally walks through why, after "Harambe" in 2016 or whenever, things seemed to have gone off the rails towards something new.

2) Cypherpunk movement's source docs. If I could bold, underline, and highlight this, I would. I have never read any group of literature/essays, especially with publishing dates in the 1990s, that more felt like a post-mortem on the 2014->2021 craziness than cypherpunk docs. I had actually wondered for a while where this core movement went, but the quick answer I've come to is cryptocurrency/e2e messaging projects absorbed a lot of it, and then the the writing often took a turn for the crazy/non-PC in the final 10 yards. But, they so accurately diagnose the growth of virtual communities and their pseudo-governmental influence, digital economy developments and all the second order effects, and so on and so on. If you're looking for people who really saw what was coming, this is the group. One of the good reads: http://alumni.media.mit.edu/~wex/panoptic-paper.html

... and if you have not read the classic "Premium Mediocre Life of Maya Millennial" you really owe it to yourself to:

https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2017/08/17/the-premium-mediocre-l...

Ahhh premiocre! I read and then forgot about this term that describes "a lot of stuff." I owe you huge internet bucks my friend, this has been at the tip of my tongue for months.

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