A fun observation which may or may not mean anything. I recently listened to a lecture here in Sweden about new technology. Yes, it included flying cars, but also other stuff: self-going trucks, AI, robots, and so on. The interesting thing was that the lecturer asked “was it really better in the so-called good old days” and then proceeded to diss…the 20th century! I mean, they had two world wars and the Spanish flue, which was much worse than COVID! The best year in world history was 2019!
Now, he has a point of course. Still, as recently as the 2010´s, believers in Progress argued that the 20th century really was the best ever, despite the world wars. Wasn´t this the argument of Steven Pinker, for instance?
It struck me that the lecturer was old enough to have lived most of his life during the accursed 20th century, yet dissed it. For the benefit of a younger generation, perhaps? I found it intriguing that People´s Exhibit A for Progress (the good ol´ 1900´s) were so unceremoniously tossed out as if nothing!
Another weird thing I noticed lately, which I have already commented upon, was the spin the media gave a recent NASA report about climate change. The report said that a natural cycle in the Moon´s motions, which affects the tides on Earth, might lead to more coastal flooding than usual due to climate change. Yet, the media (which are supposed to be "woke" on climate change issues) spun the whole thing as "the Moon did it"! And this in the middle of a long hot summer with a lot of flooding and *enormous* forest fires all over the world?! I have no idea whether this was just a click baitish fluke, or whether the establishment is quietly preparing to abandon its (purely nominal) admission of climate crisis and its (partially real) support for Green capitalism in favor of something else, say a good ol´ fossil fuel extravaganza, and that this was a trial balloon of some kind. Probably the former, but we´ll see...
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