Culture In The Modern Age
August 2018 Editorial
www.ink2quill.com

How long ago was it that travelling was off limits to most people? When did travelling become so accessible? One documentary stated that a plane trip across the Atlantic Ocean in the beginning half of the 20th century cost at least a month´s wages of a good job. Nowadays, it´s less than a week´s wages if you choose the right time to go. So travelling has become less and less a thing of luxury.

The same is true for technology. The tech industries just keeps churning out more and more advanced and more powerful technologies for us, the everyday person, at cheaper prices. We carry around powerful computers we call smart phones that are thinner than a paper money wallet with the ability to reach people and information sources around the world and across different cultures. So powerful technologies are much less a thing of luxury with each passing year.

Those two facts have empowered the individual in ways they could never have dreamt of. With all these changes a person or group of people can keep better care of themselves, their relationships, any projects they are working on  and their assets. The significance of that is that a person is able to take care of themselves better than they ever have. Access to healthcare and knowledge has made life better for so many of us in the modern age than if we were at the highest ranks of societies in the olden days.

So the big question I have is where will we steer society now that we have what we have? Where are the visionaries, sociologists and philosophers who will help us plot that course as a collective with great works of art, literature and ideas? I look around and see the so-called visionaries who mostly repeat what others have said before them. I see those that cautiously give their view of where we are headed but none of these people are outside the crowd of accepted ideas.

The water for that kind of a drought has always been a good book. Send me some good ideas.

John

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