Complex Numbers

Changes

You'll be pleased to know that there's only a week left of me doing prompts from "JAFBG"  [XGC].

The world changes pretty quickly. What are some things that have changed in society since you were a kid and what things have stayed the same?

I guess the biggest change is the extinction of the woolly mammoth. Those things used to shake the ground in their herds, but then one day, boom, gone.

Or maybe it was the invention of the wheel. Well, actually, wheels were around before I was born; it's the axle that really changed society by letting us load captured enemies on carts instead of dragging them behind horses.

Okay, okay, fine, something serious.

Society ebbs and flows, and most changes are fads and fashions, superficial stuff. But technology has the potential to bring lasting changes to society, so I'm mostly focusing on technology here. And again, this is a U.S. perspective because that's where I live.

My birth year was a little more than 60 years after the first powered controlled flight. The first 747 took off a few years after I was born. In just a few years, more time will have passed between "now" and my birth than between my birth and the first flight. A lot changed in those first 60-some years, but commercial air travel since then? Apart from a few details, such as trip volume, engine efficiency, security theater, and the willingness to pack us into those damn aluminum tubes like pickles in a jar, it hasn't materially changed since I was born. Oh, we toyed with supersonic jets for a bit, but they never made a lot of commercial sense.

Nor has automobile travel changed much, except for increased safety measures -- interstates were mostly built before I was born.

What I'm getting at is we're using the same modes of transportation as we did in the 60s. The only exception is urban scooter rentals and the like, which hardly count. Other countries introduced higher-speed rail, but that's still just rail. Electric cars are still just cars.

The reason I mention this is that there is one thing that has changed radically, which is communication. The internet has connected all of us in a way transportation doesn't -- for better and for worse.

And even with all the downsides of it, I'd rather have the internet than not. Being able to communicate in real time with people from all over the world? That's very cool. Streaming video on demand? Absolutely cool. Knowledge at my fingertips? Love it (even if I do have to double- and triple- check most of it). Best of all, I can usually avoid the parts of it that suck, such as vertical video, social media and intrusive ads.

I can't let this go without nodding in the direction of the most important U.S. societal change in my lifetime.

On October 14, 1978, President Carter signed federal transportation bill H.R 1337 into law. It included Amendment Number 3534, proposed by Senator Alan Cranston of California, authorizing the home production of wine and beer.  

This federal legalization of home brewing created many hobby brewers, some of whom went on to open craft breweries, thus changing society for the better. We don't live in a perfect world, of course, but having microbreweries around at least keeps this timeline from verging into absolute dystopia.

So which was more important, craft breweries, or the internet? I really can't say. I do know that I'd never find as many beers to try if it weren't for the internet... but on the flip side, I'd have less use for the internet if I couldn't use it to find breweries. So... both?

Sure. Why not both.