With the current hype around AI, it’s easy to feel that there’s something special or unique about the transformation we’re going through as a society right now. Thanks for the reminder that societal and technological change was experienced and dealt with by people long before us, and there’s things we can learn from those who didn’t make it into most history books.
Thanks for reading, Pawel! It's striking to encounter a figure like Scott in the archives, in part because his career was unique in so many respects and in part because he was thoroughly representative of his times. The other figure in the piece who I think is quite interesting in that respect is Elihu Root, who was 16 when the Civil War began and lived until 1937: on the one hand, he shows up everywhere and has a hand in shaping events as a modernizer and reformer, but also lives to see some of the axioms of U.S. politics and foreign policy with which he was so comfortable become outmoded.
With the current hype around AI, it’s easy to feel that there’s something special or unique about the transformation we’re going through as a society right now. Thanks for the reminder that societal and technological change was experienced and dealt with by people long before us, and there’s things we can learn from those who didn’t make it into most history books.
Thanks for reading, Pawel! It's striking to encounter a figure like Scott in the archives, in part because his career was unique in so many respects and in part because he was thoroughly representative of his times. The other figure in the piece who I think is quite interesting in that respect is Elihu Root, who was 16 when the Civil War began and lived until 1937: on the one hand, he shows up everywhere and has a hand in shaping events as a modernizer and reformer, but also lives to see some of the axioms of U.S. politics and foreign policy with which he was so comfortable become outmoded.