Good question! (And I’m sorry to be so slow responding to your comment — it was stuck in the spam queue, of all places). Anyway — I think the answer might be “sometimes.” Yes, change is incremental and the process of transformation often proceeds at a moderate pace. But at times the shift is really dramatic — even if you can’t quite see what the future holds, there’s a sense that much is in the balance, that big changes are underway, and that things are moving quickly. I remember having that sense in 1989, which I experienced as a graduate student doing research in Moscow. Every day I emerged from the archive to find the world perceptibly changed, and by fall it was clear that there would be no going back. Things had shifted dramatically and in short order. I do wonder if that’ s what happening now — I’m worried about that in the political sphere, and more intrigued (but also a bit concerned) about the rise of the internet of things.

Good question! (And I’m sorry to be so slow responding to your comment — it was stuck in the spam queue, of all places). Anyway — I think the answer might be “sometimes.” Yes, change is incremental and the process of transformation often proceeds at a moderate pace. But at times the shift is really dramatic — even if you can’t quite see what the future holds, there’s a sense that much is in the balance, that big changes are underway, and that things are moving quickly. I remember having that sense in 1989, which I experienced as a graduate student doing research in Moscow. Every day I emerged from the archive to find the world perceptibly changed, and by fall it was clear that there would be no going back. Things had shifted dramatically and in short order. I do wonder if that’ s what happening now — I’m worried about that in the political sphere, and more intrigued (but also a bit concerned) about the rise of the internet of things.