Behold this One Strange Trick
21st July 2026
Societies don’t cope well with technological innovation that changes the way people live every day. Because once you change the way people live every day, you’re changing the way people interact, which means the structures of society are going to start not working the way they were intended to.
Right now we’re in a time of catastrophic innovation. What does that mean? It means that we’ve reached a point where innovation is building on innovation — which is to be fair what innovation does. First someone figures out how to dig in the ground and plant some seeds and next thing you know someone is planting kale, and then you have to kill them and… ahem… — and the new one is dropping before we’ve even started to process the effects of the last one.
Honestly, the Heinlein time line (not that one. I was told I can no longer mention that particular story here, not without doing the whole Black Adder dance for when someone mentions the Scottish Play) would have been easier on our institutions as they were when he wrote the juveniles. Going to space would just be a continuation of the westward expansion, and at least on earth there was no big innovation on communication and putting the power of communication in the hands of individual to counter the centralized big media. (Or the power of manufacturing, to counter centralized big industry. Okay, we’re on the early stages of that, but it could easily be the next big break through.) In fact, he had Earth become more and more the worst aspects of FDR, to be honest.
But no. We weren’t allowed to go to space (no, you can’t possibly convince me it wasn’t deliberate. The way the left hates any attempt at space exploration and becomes insane with their FEFer (Fix Earth First) bullshit, you know they did what they could to prevent us leaving this rock.) And so some geeks in garages created the internet revolution. Yes, yes, I now. Government, but be real. If it hadn’t escaped into private lands and cat memes, it would still be unimportant to all but defense geeks.
And that… well, that escaped containment again, at least in the US right after 9/11, when a lot of us trying to figure out what was happening and what should happen hit the internet and a lot of the big blogs now originated. And then there was social media, and then–
Well. Here we are.