I'm afraid I'm not terribly impressed. While some of the specific statistics are new, the overall theme could have been compiled into a similar video - with contemporaneously astounding numbers - at any point in my adult lifetime. Or earlier. Any reading of history will show that people thought about change in these exact terms with the adoption of television, or the automobile, or the telephone, or electricity, or the railroad. Changes that are popularly accepted can percolate through society at a much faster rate, but other changes are still much slower. How long will it take for hybrid or electric cars to reach 50 million? Or the Kindle? Or solar roofing panels? If you are 1 in a million in the U.S. there are 300 people like you. That was true in the USSR before it was true here and look how that turned out.
The entire foundation of modern science fiction lies in the omnipresent feeling of rapid and exponential change that was present in American society in the first half of the 20th century. Campbell and his boys would have been impossible without it. That's maybe why this feels so old to me. Didn't I see this at the 1939 World's Fair? Change always seems overwhelmingly fast to all people in all modern cultures. That is the one constant in the world. If you want original fun astounding statistics I recommend the Harper's Index, published monthly in Harper's Magazine. http://www.harpers.org/subjects/HarpersIndex --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "R-SPEC: The Rochester Speculative Literature Association" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/r-spec?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
