Essay by Morgan Housel: “An irony of studying history is that we often know exactly how a story ends, but have no idea where it began…
Nothing is as influential as World War II has been. But there are a few other Big Things worth paying attention to, because they’re the root influencer of so many other topics.
The three big ones that stick out are demographics, inequality, and access to information.
There are hundreds of forces shaping the world not mentioned here. But I’d argue that many, even most, are derivatives of those three.
Each of these Big Things will have a profound impact on the coming decades because they’re both transformational and ubiquitous. They impact nearly everyone, albeit in different ways. With that comes the reality that we don’t know exactly how their influence will unfold. No one in 1945 knew exactly how World War II would go on to shape the world, only that it would in extreme ways. But we can guess some of the likeliest changes.
Essay by Morgan Housel: “An irony of studying history is that we often know exactly how a story ends, but have no idea where it began…
3. Access to information closes gaps that used to create a social shield of ignorance.
Carole Cole disappeared in 1970 after running away from a juvenile detention center in Texas. She was 17.
A year later an unidentified murdered body was found in Louisiana. It was Carole, but Louisiana police had no idea. They couldn’t identify her. Carole’s disappearance went cold, as did the unidentified body.
Thirty-four years later Carole’s sister posted messages on Craigslist asking for clues into her sister’s disappearance. At nearly the same time, a sheriff’s department in Louisiana made a Facebook page asking for help identifying the Jane Doe body found 34 years before.
Six days later, someone connected the dots between the two posts.
What stumped detectives for almost four decades was solved by Facebook and Craigslist in less than a week.
This kind of stuff didn’t happen even 10 years ago. And we probably haven’t awoken to its full potential – good and bad.
The greatest innovation of the last generation has been the destruction of information barriers that used to keep strangers isolated from one another…(More)”