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The Post-Idea World
An anonymous reader sends this quote from an opinion piece in the NY Times:
"If our ideas seem smaller nowadays, it's not because we are dumber than our forebears but because we just don't care as much about ideas as they did. In effect, we are living in an increasingly post-idea world — a world in which big, thought-provoking ideas that can't instantly be monetized are of so little intrinsic value that fewer people are generating them and fewer outlets are disseminating them, the Internet notwithstanding. Bold ideas are almost passé. ... There is the eclipse of the public intellectual in the general media by the pundit who substitutes outrageousness for thoughtfulness, and the concomitant decline of the essay in general-interest magazines. And there is the rise of an increasingly visual culture, especially among the young — a form in which ideas are more difficult to express. But these factors, which began decades ago, were more likely harbingers of an approaching post-idea world than the chief causes of it."
I think there are plenty of good ideas -- small, medium, and large -- today. For example, see TED.
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
I think the problem here is that good essays and insights get lost in the everyday noise and only show their value as they persist over time and more and more people get to see the ingenuity and foresight in them.
I don't think Senecas letters were very famous back then or well know beyond a very small group of people (those he wrote them to). And I also am pretty sure that most citizens of the roman empire didn't care squat about a broad transcendent view on life beyond 'lets pray to jupiter as to win this racing bet'. It is only centuries latter that the quality stuff is still around whilst everyday drivel and non-sense go lost in time and replaced with todays everday drivel and non-sense. Thus we get the impression that back in Senecas time society was full of smart and witty politicians and philosophers making great speeches.
When people in 200 years look at todays Inet Tech era and read Paul Grahams essays - which will still exist while every techcrunch feed will have gone the way of the dodo - people will get the same impression. Lot's of very smart and educated people back then, everything today is degenerated, grand old masters, blabla, jadajada ...
My 2 cents.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
That's because they were more into patenting others ideas rather than coming up with their own.
Edison mostly monetized the ideas of his employees. (I see you got the same discount scratch-and-dent education I did.)
We have people tinkering with Arduino, with 3D printers, changing the firmware on commercial products. We've got this "maker" thing (subculture?). We've got social networks fueling revolutions, we've got increasing conflict between governments and corporations stamping down on freedom, and people starting to resist it. We've got crowd-funded series and movies being made. We've got artists, musicians, TV-makers, writers and programmers making it big without requiring the blessing of record companies, big studios, or publishers.
We've got plenty of interesting stuff going on that's going on right now. It's just that the big media always only notices this stuff when it's over, so to them it seems as if there's nothing new happening. But the '80s were no different in that regard. And I doubt Einstein made the front pages in 1905 either.