A working hypothesis - Charlie's Diary

Public Read

URL

http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2010/09/a-working-hypothesis.html

Description

I had been blaming the decade long rise of extremism and authoritarian clampdowns on some kind of post-millennial fallout - the calendar ticks over, and nothing changes, and all that pent up stress has to go somewhere - but the idea that a significant chunk of the population of the planet might actually be suffering from future shock hadn't occurred to me, but it's an idea worth acknowledging, I think. (And playing connect the dots with - qv. Clay Shirky's Gin and Sitcoms ideas about cognitive surplus as an exacerbating factor.)