Every now and then one stumbles across a graph. The X axis reads "Years". Sometimes this scale stretches back to the paleolithic era, sometimes it reaches back to the late 1990's. The Y axis is always different yet something alarmist in nature: "House Prices", "The Population of The Earth (billions)", "Homicides", "Immigrants", "Amount of Data Stored on Computers Worldwide", "Greenhouse Gas Emissions", or simple "Ants". The one constant is the fact that there "we" exist at the far right hand side of the curve. Back on the left the curve was almost a flat line. Then everything went wrong and now here we find ourselves on the right side with the curve screaming towards the sky, ready to burst out of the top of the graph, exit the medium upon which the graph is imprinted, and wrap itself around our throats to strangle us on the spot.
In no way is my description of the graph meant to downplay what is printed on the Y axis. Heck, we all have our own Y axis that concerns us and in most case these concerns are valid. What I would like to bring to light is my inability to tell whether or not these things are merely new words printed on the same old graphs that people in times preceding ours had: With their own curves, their own rates of acceleration, and their own labels.
Or, conversely, are we truly accelerating exponentially as a whole? Everything: Humanity, technology, the environment, and commerce. Have they all, all of the sudden, stepped on the gas and we are just happening to exist just at the right time and place to see it all go down? There are definitely days when I fell the acceleration and it scares me. Then again I'm not the first person in history to click my tongue and wish for the days of old.
What can I say, I'm like Fox News: I Report, You Decide.
4 comments:
Back in the day Archimedes drew out the y-axis with a quill and Indian ink (yeah, that’s what it was called). And the ink part held pretty constant through a few centuries, although the delivery mechanism progressed to steel dip nibs. For a brief moment “fountain” pens held sway until about the time Moore postulated his law. After that, ignoring the minor intrusion of the ball-point, no one could draw a straight line without a monitor or a laser printer and that’s when the y-axis hit the accelerator and it was bye-bye American pie. So now we can cram our ass in a Kia and move to Armageddon at warp speed; it’s called progress. As for Archimedes, he got whacked by a Roman soldier (pre-mafia) while drawing a y-axis. You can’t outrun the y-axis…it gets us all. But while you’re waiting you can spend some quality wireless time at Starbucks. Make mine a Grande….
Here is a new graph that will fill you with hope. I am tired of your anti-authoritarian doomsday rants and lack of soccer participation. Click on my name and enjoy steroid-free baseball.
A striking irony in the realization that the very endeavor you depend on for your personal survival causes such wrenching angst when viewed in the context of its probable impact on universal continuance. It must drive the soul to search for a measure of atonement...such as avoiding the consumption of Big Macs...or something in that vein.
Kurt, the biting sarcasm mixed with run-on sentences. It could be but one person, and he makes fans. Big ones.
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