The other day a friend of mine sent me an email that listed various changes that have taken place over the past one hundred years, and the very medium by which the list came is pretty much the message: lots of information travelling around the world very fast, pretty much free of any sort of discernment but, good fodder for most information junkies.
So in 1908....
The average life expectancy was 47 years.
Only 14 percent of homes had a bathtub.
Only 8 percent of homes had a telephone.
There were only 8,000 cars and only 144 miles of paved roads in the United States.
The maximum speed limit in most cities was 10 mph.
The tallest structure in the world was the Eiffel Tower.
The average wage was 22 cents per hour.
The average worker made between $200 and $400 per year.
A competent accountant could expect to earn $2000 per year, A
dentist 2,500 per year, a veterinarian between $1,500 and $4,000 per year, and
a mechanical engineer about $5,000 per year.
More than 95 percent of all births took place at home.
Ninety percent of all doctors had no college education. Instead, they attended so-called medical schools, many of which were condemned in the press and the government as "substandard."
Sugar cost four cents a pound.
Eggs were fourteen cents a dozen.
Coffee was fifteen cents a pound.
Most women only washed their hair once a month, and used Borax or
egg yolks for shampoo.
Canada passed a law that prohibited poor people from entering into their country for any reason.
Five leading causes of death were:
1. Pneumonia and influenza
2. Tuberculosis
3. Diarrhea
4. Heart disease
5. Stroke
The American flag had 45 stars.
The population of Las Vegas, Nevada was only 30.
Crossword puzzles, canned beer, and ice tea hadn't been invented yet.
There was no Mother's Day or Father's Day.
Two out of every 10 adults couldn't read or write.
Only 6 percent of all Americans had graduated from high school.
Marijuana, heroin, and morphine were all available over the counter at the local corner drugstores. Back then pharmacists said, "Heroin clears the complexion, gives buoyancy to the mind, regulates the stomach and bowels, and is, in fact, a perfect guardian of health."
Eighteen percent of households had at least one full-time servant or domestic help.
This list could be described as somewhat cultural in nature. It does remind us just how quickly our world can change in a lifetime. Some things gained, others lost. In fact most of the political visions that envelop our lives today came within this period, universal health care, minimum wage, consumer protection, public schools and environmental protection. We can thank the visionaries of the early 1900's for there direction; we could use a few of them reincarnated today, to get us all thinking about the next 100 years.
The idea of day-trading, a floating currency or even an industry called tourism were not even a concept and with our dependence on technology, machines and global trade we are truly becoming our brothers keeper, as well as being kept ourselves.
It was Albert Einstein who said "A hundred times every day I remind myself that my inner and outer life are based on the labours of others". That would surly sum up the economic structure we've devised.
If we could imagine the same scope of change for the next 100 years as we have experience in this past century, we would most certainly have to rely on some sort of safety mechanism where a common morality drives us to choose to do the things that are truly beneficial for human-kind and the planet.
Don’t you think?
It wasn't long ago that Italian philosopher Umberto Eco suggested that the next great genius who could be compared to DaVinci or Einstein would be the person who discovers the method by which information discernment can be taught to the world.
Eco is convinced that human beings seek out more information than they know what to do with and without the knowledge-base to use information constructively we actually become destructive.
His thinking is timely, considering just how much we have impacted the world in the past 100 years. Eco was the guy behind that unforgettable Mac versus DOS metaphor. In a review by Lee Marshall from Wired Magazine, (March 1997) he cited Eco describing that in one of his weekly columns he first mused upon the "software schism" dividing users of Macintosh and DOS operating systems. Mac, he posited, is Catholic, with "sumptuous icons" and the promise of offering everybody the chance to reach the Kingdom of Heaven ("or at least the moment when your document is printed") by following a series of easy steps. DOS, on the other hand, is Protestant: "it allows free interpretation of scripture, demands difficult personal decisions . . . and takes for granted that not all can reach salvation." Following this logic, Windows becomes "an Anglican-style schism -- big ceremonies in the cathedral, but with the possibility of going back secretly to DOS in order to modify just about anything you like." (Asked to embellish the metaphor, Eco called Windows 95 "pure unadulterated Catholicism. Already Windows 3.1 was more than Anglican - it was Anglo-Catholic, keeping a foot in both camps. But Windows 95 goes all the way: six Hail Mary’s and how about a little something for the Mother Church in Seattle.")
It's a metaphor of the times for sure. Group this idea with Shopping Malls being our new places of worship, and we might be finding a trend here. In fact we are on the brink of a kind of techno-spiritualism that randomly links our morals of the day with economic needs and technological efficiencies in order to retain our prosperity. Oh by the way mix in a dash of substance, goal and consumer addiction and we will keep the whole system growing and constant, all within the guise of sustainability.
So it should be no surprise that if given the freedom to think, learn and act, we will change the world, as quickly as possible, simply because we can, and the past 100 years proves this.
Even Eco describes himself as a polychronic personality, who “will start many things at the same time merging them together to form a continuous interconnection…If I don’t have many things to do, I am lost.”
It's probably a personal definition that defines our age; we're a people that simply demand to be busy. Without the element of discernment, it will be interesting to see how our continuous interconnection unfolds for the next century.
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