1969
2011 has been an exceptionally... dense.. year for major events. As we careen into the fourth quarter of the year with the death of one of the world's most well-known dictators, after his 42-year reign ends, I'm left thinking how this entire year has been a perpetual cycle of events of significance, one blending into the next with ne'er a moment to analyze inbetween.
Now, to cut to the chase, I think it's almost unarguable that 2011 has seen the true, society-shaping effect of the internet; we spent two decades speaking about its potential to alter the flow of human civilization once it reached ubiquity, then a decade watching that promise happen. 2011 because critical mass for the awakening of unhappy citizens, united by ubiqitous communication in the knowledge that they are not alone. One by one, the empires burned, the flames of each one fueling the next.
And the dictators tried their best to shut down the internet, and assistance came in from around the rest of the world; not from governments or military at first, but from individuals, providing alternative infrastructure, carrying messages and stories in and out while the communications embargo strained to contain them. The genie is not just out of the bottle, he',s running a full-blown magic show here, fueled by the dreams of his own audience.
Anonymous, Tor, Twitter, Tahirir Square, Tunisia, Libya.... Wall Street...
Ubiquitous global communication has given people the knowledge they are not alone, and taken away that greatest of social control tools, the lie that, if you act now, your efforts would be wasted: now people know just where and when to act in unison.
Security breaches (I've seen a few), Global Conflicts (they've come and gone), Uprisings and cries of "no more".. People died.. things ended...things began.
It all sounded a little familiar.. something else i knew of, yet not directly first-hand... the year of 1969. There's one that went down in people's memory all right, considered the apex of an era... and I started thinking "Is 2011 my generation's 1969?" ...is it comparable? are there connections?
I think so..
I think the first comparisons are ridiculously easy to make. New advances in technology give new opportunities to disenfranchised people (the internet and the pill have already both gone down in record as species-altering events for humanity). Riots in the streets, feelings of hope and change, and great dissatisfaction among the people.
But now, it's time for something more fun, those curious uncanny parallels the human brain loves to find hidden meaning in.
In 1969
- Rupert Murdoch Buys the News of the world.
- Muamar Quadhafi leads the uprising in Librya
- The Space Shuttle Program underwent its initial feasability studies
- The first version of UNIX was released
- Steve Jobs meets Steve Wozniak for the first time
- First medically-reported AIDS death
in 2011
- Rupert Murdoch shuts down the News of the World (after phone intrusion scandal)
- Quadhafi is killed with his own gun
- The Space Shuttle program is mothballed
- Dennis Richie, the first of the three creators of UNIX to die.
- Steve Jobs dies
- First AIDS vaccine reported with 90% success rate.
I'm not going to try and make the list encyclopedic, as I'm sure there are more than enough 'odd correlations' between these two years; also it would be amiss for me to point out that, yes, there are 42 years between 1969 and 2011. The human mind does love to find patterns wherever it can..
Still, the idea of 2011 being my generations 1969? I dunno, most of my generation ("Gen-X") are approaching middle age now, 42 years, after all, is quite some time; this one perhaps belongs to the Y'ers... The great gen freed the world for the baby boomers to shape it into something new, the X'ers built a new world for the Y'ers to shape once again?
I can't say for certain, looking from the inside. I'm sure most folks during 1969 felt that something significantly, irrevocably world-changing was happening that year, to them as well, but only with hindsight was that ever proved. Punk grew out of the failed promises of 1969 however. Irrevocable change has rarely been the kind of change you hope for or predict.
let's see what this decade brings; the veil is lifting for humanity every day as we gain greater insight into what we, as a species, are capable of and represent, and very specifically, all the mistakes we have made so far.
Whatever your thoughts on patterns of synchronicity however, it seems apparent that many things that started in 1969, came to a close of sorts, perhaps more of a finale, in 2011, that "the cycle has turned" once again.
