Saturday, November 30, 2002
Spent the last couple of nights getting crazy with some old school friends (highschool and college...guess they are not that old school).
It is funny how fast time can fly. Getting traction to get something done feels like a painful process that is much slower than one would expect.
I just finished this book, called Founding Brothers, that was perhaps the first book on US history I have read since High School. It is amazing to realize the intellectual epic that unfolded during revolutionary period. Even more increadible, is to realize how history was able to capture and analyze the times because of the intense reliance on written communication (as opposed to electronic). Discussions were had as much for the point being made as there were for the postierty of the History books. These written conversations held more subtle and discreet language then any interchange I have ever known (even more so then the gentle give and take present in the early courtship of lovers).
Why am I so facsinated by this subject? Well I came to realize that many of the descisions, conversations, and actions society (and more egotistically, myself) will have no method to inturpt them in the future. Sure, the Media will record and reflect major events, but often major events are precursed by a series of minor events that no one will ever truly know about. And furthermore, Media will always impart its own tint on what ever it is reporting, and unfortunetly history is always written on the terms of the winner. Think about all of the important decisions that have been made in YOUR life via temporal mediums such as instant messaging, phone calls, and email (unless you keep massive archives) which essentially blot out any historical inturptation of meaning.
Not that we are historical meaningful (yet, but I bet several people you/I know will be), but how will historians of the future perform analysis of major occurences when so much of business, politics, and life are carried out by transitory mechanisms?
food for thought anyway. Oh yeah, read the book it is enjoyable.
