If you and I see a
freight train going by, we shrug and think no big deal. We may feel
inconvenienced if we have to wait for one to go by at a crossing; we may be a
little excited if we’d put a penny on the track, but for the most part, hey, a
train.
If folks had seen
one go by in 1814, God only knows what they’d have thought it was. It might be
interpreted as a fire-breathing dragon or one of those horses from the
apocalypse. The noise alone would likely scare the daylights out of them.
It took us millions of years to get to the
Hunting/Gathering Age.
Then, it took
around 590,000 more years to get to the Horticulture & Agrarian Ages.
From there, it
took a little less than 12,000 years to get to the Industrial Age
From the
Industrial Age to the Information Age only took about 260 years.
The gaps between
the ages have gotten progressively shorter, from millions of years to just over
half a million years to 12,000 to 260. Things are changing fast. The progress
that used to take a thousand years will soon take only ten…or two…or, what time
is it now?
Everything
necessary to build and run a railroad was right here on this planet, under the
very noses of our hunting and gathering ancestors. All the physical elements
were there, they just didn’t know how to isolate, manipulate, and distribute
them. They were there, but no one noticed. What else might be right here, right
now, under our very noses without our being aware of it? What will the folks in
2114 laugh at us for not knowing? (Hey, for all we know, we’ll still be alive to
laugh about it, too.) It’s easier to believe that anything is possible than it
is to declare anything impossible.
