This gets to the core of why writing and ideas like this make me want to draw the shades and spend the rest of the week reading old books. Now is not special. If you think now is special, you are wrong. If you don't believe me, go to a book store that stocks a lot of remainders and look at all the books from 2, 3, or 5 years ago that argued that now was special then. There are more where they came from down at the library, though most have been languishing unread since about two years after their publication date. If you still don't believe me, go read every decent political speech ever written and think about how most of them are based on the subtext that now is special.



You can draw a lot of ears your way by talking about how special now is; Thomas Friedman, for one, has made a substantial career and a pretty penny out of it, and politicians wouldn't keep doing it if it didn't work. But that doesn't change the fundamental vapidity of the claim.