{"id":46805,"date":"2021-12-02T01:00:22","date_gmt":"2021-12-02T06:00:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=46805"},"modified":"2024-01-30T14:15:34","modified_gmt":"2024-01-30T19:15:34","slug":"qotd-the-quickening-pace-of-change","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2021\/12\/02\/qotd-the-quickening-pace-of-change\/","title":{"rendered":"QotD: The quickening pace of change"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p><a href=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"float:left; padding: 0px 15px 10px 0px\" src=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"400\" height=\"400\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-48672\" srcset=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400.png 400w, https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400-150x150.png 150w, https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400-50x50.png 50w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px\" \/><\/a>One of the toughest things to get across to History students is the pace of change. Students hate it, but the &#8220;memorize this list of dates&#8221; approach actually helps \u2014 one can&#8217;t help but notice that your list of &#8220;the 20 most significant dates&#8221; for, say, the medieval period covers a millennium, while that same list for the Roman Empire covers maybe a century. Even there, though, most people could be forgiven for mistaking 50 AD for 150 AD, or even 250 AD (even archaeologists generally consider it a success if they can date something to within a century, I&#8217;m told).<\/p>\n<p>But nobody would mistake 1790 for 1890, let alone 1990. A Roman of the late Republic (100 BC) could still get around ok if you time-warped him into the late Empire (300 AD). Time warp a guy from 1790 into 1890, though, and he&#8217;d think he was on Mars. (Zap him into 1990, and he&#8217;d think he&#8217;d died and gone to Hell). The pace of change accelerated exponentially starting in about 1400; by the Industrial Era it was a blur.<\/p>\n<p>Which is why I&#8217;m terrified right now. We <em>feel like<\/em> change is happening at light speed. As a Historian, I can promise you \u2014 it&#8217;s at least Warp 6, and the dilithium crystals are nowhere near to overloading.<\/p>\n<p>Severian, <!--<a href=\"http:\/\/www.rottenchestnuts.com\/faster-and-faster\/\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">-->&#8220;Faster and Faster&#8221;, <em>Rotten Chestnuts<\/em>, 2019-02-01.<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>One of the toughest things to get across to History students is the pace of change. Students hate it, but the &#8220;memorize this list of dates&#8221; approach actually helps \u2014 one can&#8217;t help but notice that your list of &#8220;the 20 most significant dates&#8221; for, say, the medieval period covers a millennium, while that same [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[79,7,41],"tags":[288,561,1462,1138,764],"class_list":["post-46805","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-education","category-history","category-quotations","tag-archaeology","tag-rome","tag-severian","tag-thepastisaforeigncountry","tag-university"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-caV","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46805","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46805"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46805\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":87055,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46805\/revisions\/87055"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46805"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46805"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46805"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}