Sleight of Hand

What if we have been mislead by a sleight of hand, snuck past us in the very story about the technology running our world?

We are told over and again tech has remade the world. There is always an invention – typically in communications – that has transformed our world into a distinct and different one than that which preceded it.

But what does this idea accomplish? Well, one, it ahistorifies us. How could we engage meaningfully with history if we believe we’re in a time discontiguous to any period before it? If this were the case - why would we?

So: What if this isn’t the case at all? What does it mean if we are functionally still living in the same exact world as the 1980s, 70s, 60s? That today’s issues aren’t new whatsoever, but we’re seeing them askew through the lens of self-supposed ‘future people’? What if we’re at an impasse with our problem solving because we are mislocating ourselves, placing ourselves at an imaginary point in history, a future that doesn’t actually exist, but is rather the accumulated projection of this sleight of hand as reinforced by the very communication technologies themselves?