This, I think, is KK’s primary insight into the singularity (or whatever) — not that these changes aren’t big deals, because they are. It’s that we can only tell THAT they are big deals from a distance, either in the future or the past. When we’re in them, they’re both too big and too gradual — and we are too busy, myopic, or obnoxious — for it to actually appear to us.

I actually tend to be pretty sympathetic to the Kurzweilian “things are getting uniquely crazy” argument, but I find that sympathy fading lately. Maybe part of it is hanging out here & having these conversations about history & media. It seems credible to me now that, sure, biotech is a big deal — technology to literally tinker with our human-ness. But writing was (maybe?) just as big a deal, and it too tinkered with our human-ness. And so on.