‘To settle a family argument’, as they say… In the usual robust and frank exchange of views with my brother-in-law, the sort of which customarily take place late in the afternoon following a convivial lunch, we took opposite sides on this point — that a person born in, say, an American or European city in or around 1840 and died at the ripe old age of 95 in around 1935 saw more fundamental changes in his or her life than someone alive today. My brother-in-law’s view was that the Internet has done so much more to rewire the human psyche than all the railway, oil, coal gas, electricity, the telegraph, telephone, radio, automobiles, airplanes, medical advances and a myriad other bits of hardware did.
I am not so sure I’m right any longer…
Tough one.