Was there more progress from 1890 to 1950 than 1950 to 2010?
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  Was there more progress from 1890 to 1950 than 1950 to 2010?
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Author Topic: Was there more progress from 1890 to 1950 than 1950 to 2010?  (Read 1867 times)
Beet
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« on: April 21, 2015, 06:29:55 PM »

In terms of sheer changes to life, yes. Electricity*, skyscrapers, cars, airplanes, telephones, film, radio, television, rocketry, nuclear weapons- all of this stuff the average person basically did not know about in 1890 (or to the extent it was known, it was a novelty), yet by 1950 or thereabouts, is a part of daily life. In 1890, the world was still a largely agrarian place, the average person had never even seen a skyscraper, and was probably in total shock at something like the Brooklyn Bridge. They rode around on horses. If you put them in a movie theater and have a train approaching the camera, they'll start screaming and running out of the theater. Yet by 1950, almost all the accouterments of modern life are in place. The world of Mad Men is, technologically, not so different from our own.

* IMO, electricity is the defining feature of the modern world, and if any event can be said to mark the temporal dividing line between premodern and modern eras, it would probably be the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago. The modern world lasts until the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, which marks the beginning of the postmodern world.
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buritobr
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« Reply #1 on: April 21, 2015, 08:53:22 PM »

Depends.

The technologies created between 1890 and 1950 were more important than the technologies created between 1950 and 2010. I imagine myself living without smartphones, microcomputers and digital cameras, but I don't imagine myself living without water in pipes, electricity, automobiles, refrigerator, cinema, television. The goods produced by the Second Industrial Revolution were more important than the goods produced by the Third Industrial Revolution. OK, i would not writing this post if there were no Third Industrial Revolution, but writing this post is not very important.

But the technologies created between 1890 and 1950 were spread faster between 1950 and 2010. In 1950, very few people in the world had access to sanitation, electricity, television, automobile, refrigerator.
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H. Ross Peron
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« Reply #2 on: April 24, 2015, 03:55:03 AM »

Yes (Normal). I would say it would be more easier to say there was more progress from 1916 to 1968 than from 1968 to 2015
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Nathan
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« Reply #3 on: April 24, 2015, 05:57:34 AM »
« Edited: April 24, 2015, 06:09:08 AM by sex-negative feminist prude »

I'm not sure what I think of the idea of 'more progress' as something measurable, but subjectively, from a social history point of view, I think I'm in agreement here. A definition of modernity that only lasts for forty-six years is pretty weird (I'm reminded of your construction of a single 'Japanese Golden Age' comprising the entire Meiji, Taishō, and Shōwa eras), but finessing a subdivision of 'high modernity' or 'peak modernity' corresponding to the lost world of the early twentieth century would perhaps not be amiss. (Although a search indicates that the term 'high modernity' is usually used, when it is used, to refer to the sociocultural environment of the early Cold War, so perhaps something else would be better.)

The 'Victorian Internet' idea isn't perfect, but in its basics it's I think a better model for expositing the history of telecommunications than the sort of feverish quasi-utopian understanding of computing that's so popular these days.
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Mechaman
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« Reply #4 on: April 24, 2015, 11:47:47 AM »
« Edited: April 24, 2015, 11:50:28 AM by Stone Cold Conservative »

It really depends upon what definition of "progress" you use.  If you go by purely technological progress 1890 to 1950 is the clear winner.  If we go by economic progression that would depend on if you are talking about the "western" or "non-western" world.  If you go by societal progress it is arguably 1950 to 2010.  For me it really depends on if you are talking about results or if you are talking about where society seems to be headed.

With that stated out of the two choices I'd go with 1890 to 1950.  In addition to the technological advancements of that era that pretty much gave rise to modern America there was also a very good deal of societal progress.  The world went from being ruled by a handful of white European powers to hundreds of sovereign nations (though your mileage may vary on how independent many of these countries were).  Western nations went from traditional "the business of the government is business" mentality to actively creating large welfare states to address the concerns of the lower classes.  Political ideologies like Communism and Socialism were finally taken out of the philosophy textbook and practiced in the real world, though results did vary.  Women were finally given the right to vote.  The concerns of the organized labor went from being demonized as "radical" and "fringe" to being a very strong special interest comparable to multi-million dollar corporations.  The Atomic Bomb put a very apocalyptic face to the carnage and desolation caused by major wars like World War I and World War II.  And even in the field of Civil Rights, while the US at least embraced extreme segregationism in the 1890s-mid 1930s and Jim Crow was not overturned, in the years following World War II not even the United States Democratic Party was willing to ignore the issue of non-white equality.

And these are just a few I could think of in twenty minutes.  It'd probably take me all day to list the rest.

Yeah, I'm going with option A here.
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CrabCake
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« Reply #5 on: April 26, 2015, 05:37:31 AM »

In America the former, globally the latter.
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Filuwaúrdjan
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« Reply #6 on: April 26, 2015, 01:13:00 PM »

Yet by 1950, almost all the accouterments of modern life are in place. The world of Mad Men is, technologically, not so different from our own.

Mad Men is not set in 1950 but 1960-70. This is not a minor quibble: for ordinary people in the West the world was remade in the 1950s and 1960s and this was widely regarded as being the fruit of Progress. Suddenly (and it really was sudden in many countries) people were no longer poor; they could afford to buy nice things, they could afford to buy disposable things too. They could live in nicer houses, nicer houses lit by electricity. These nice new houses even had inside toilets as a matter of course. They didn't even have to leave these houses in order to be entertained, because of that new democratic miracle of a cultural medium: television. They could afford to buy cars, and did so in numbers not predicted by city planners or motorway engineers. The landscape around them was changing: in the cities and in the towns wartime damage, old slums and (regrettably often) buildings that were just unfashionable were swept away and replaced by shiny new constructions of concrete and glass. The countryside contracted in the face of private suburban development and new state-planned settlements (the exact balance depending on the country in question), and changed in other respects as farmers too decided that Progress was the way forward (the consequences for the environment were not positive). And, my God, look at all the breakthroughs of Science And Technology! A man in space! Another on the moon! Incredible!

An argument for stasis of a sort in the West does exist, but you can't date it any earlier than the 1970s if you want to be taken seriously.

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