In 3024, if our epoch is given any consideration by historians, what will they say?

I suspect that whatever truly significant trend the few decades around 2000 end up contributing to the unfolding cosmic saga, it has yet to be appreciated. The most obvious (to us) radical changes over the last hundred years are pretty clearly spaceflight, atomic and nuclear weapons, the predominance of air over sea travel, and the computer/Internet revolution. But I don’t think any of them are going to cut it.

Yes, we have an armada of artificial satellites. Yes, we have sent twelve men to the moon. Yes, our unmanned exploration of the solar system has brought us beautiful pictures and some scientific advancement. Compared to what we could have done, though, we as a species – even as a nation – have shown a singular lack of interest in the wider universe. Want to know what NASA’s cut of the federal budget is? Don’t look it up; nobody needs that kind of disappointment in their life. If our half-assed space program is remembered at all, it will be as a darkly humorous reminder of the dangers of apathy.

Uranium and hydrogen bombs are awesomely powerful, and they have significantly changed the game of war (or at least its subtext). Either we will end up using them by the hundreds, or we will sensibly dispense with them. In one case they will be forgotten; in the other case, there’ll be no historians to remember us.

For thousands of years, ships and caravans were essential to long-distance travel. Pretty soon they will be again — airlines are hemorrhaging money, and with the continuing redistribution of wealth away from any semblance of equality, no one will be able to afford tickets. Flying the way we do now is a fad.

I am typing this on a computer and sharing it via the Internet. Surely to goodness this technology is significant and here to stay! Well yes, probably, but it’s not as revolutionary as we’re led to believe. Up until the mid-20th century, the absence of a truly global mass media meant that every part of the Earth had its own celebrities, its own stories and values — its own culture. Then, suddenly, a very limited number of media events monopolized the world’s attention: Lucy and Marilyn, the Beatles on Ed Sullivan, Star Trek and Star Wars, the Da Vinci Code and Harry Potter, commercials for McDonald’s and Coca-Cola. Everyone on the planet was exposed to these things, without a terrible amount of competition. But they have few successors — nowadays, everyone can find their own niche and there is no new all-pervasive cultural program to monopolize our attention. We are back to localized thought; the isolation is no longer geographical but ideological, and that doesn’t really make much of a difference.

One good thing, maybe, has come from the proliferation of ideas made possible by the Internet: most of those pre-computer local cultures, and certainly the brief global monopoly, actively discouraged the kind of individual exploration and growth that is necessary for self-actualization. This is reasonable; such limited ideologies could not survive if the majority of humans were self-aware, compassionate, and interested in following their inner passions. Some (perhaps a few percent more) of the newer local cultures actively encourage adherents to step out of the machinery. Because the new local cultures are smaller than the old ones (compare, for example, QAnon with the Roman Catholic Church in 1400), it is perhaps less likely that the aggressive, unhealthy ones will squash the others as fully or quickly as has happened in past cycles.

Things have changed since 1924, and certainly since 1024. Perhaps the change has even been important. I’m not sure.