Friday, September 21, 2012

Greece, Rome, and Our Future

Bob, ancient history provides a model, comparison. Think Greek city states. Think Roman empire. The city states were decentralized, but they formed leagues, or networks to use today's language, to meet various needs, e.g. defense and trade. In comparison, the Roman empire centralized to the point that it broke down. It was a factory model. The Internet is now making it possible to decentralized in the fashion of Greek city states - which provides flexibility and human scale, in comparison with the mammoth centralized urban sprawl of ancient Rome. The themes of history remain constant; Futurists employ such historical comparisons to help us to make better sense of trends today.

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