Blog post: randomc: Act

Seemingly innocuous communications innovations have catalyzed the largest scale changes in history. With the advent of written language, centralized bureaucratic states became possible; shipping and the roman road allowed such a state to sprawl across much of Europe and North Africa; the Gutenburg printing press disseminated knowledge which catalyzed the Enlightenment period and the Reformation; telegraph and railways were at the heart of the industrial revolution. Even the humble telly drove up crime rates and general feistiness in the generation that first grew up with them (see - one of the freakonomics books).

Thus, to predict that the consequences of the communications revolution we are living through will be whoppingly huge is a very reasonable prediction.

A useful perspective on such periods of fucking hu-normogous change as ours can be found in a debate that flared up last year with the publication of Acemoglu and Robinson's 'why nations fail', between the authors and Jared Diamond (guns, germs and steel; collapse; ).

TBH, it was less a debate than Acemoglu and Robinson chewing their own faces off while Diamond patted them serenely on the head - Acemoglu and Robinson's institutional 'lens' actually complements Diamond's geographical explanation of the origin of the differences between contemporary states rather well. But conflict generates interest better than accord, i suppose. And fair play to them, i say. It's a good book.

Here's (some of) the debate

Diamond's review of 'Why nations fail'

Acemoglu and Robinson respond

The 'synthesis' seems to be that regions where inclusive institutions (per Acemoglu and Robinson) fail to establish do so because they experience a higher frequency of critical junctures, in large part as a consequence of geographical factors (per Diamond).

So for example, higher presence of disease vectors and possibly also mutation rates of viruses in tropical climates result in more critical junctures than in temperate latitudes. And regions experiencing lots of critical junctures are simply shaken up more; clement geography begets stability, and stability is necessary to preserve good institutions, which are, of course, rather rarer than bad ones.

Anyway, communications innovation and fucking jygantahuge change: we are at a critical juncture. But because we experience relatively few of these events we are complacent. We are disinterested in the stewardship of the benevolent institutions we've inherited. And if we don't wake up, we are going to let it all slip away.
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