You know the French saying: Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose, right? Roughly translated, it's "the more things change the more they stay the same." I came upon a piece in an old issue of the New Yorker this morning that brought the phrase to mind.
Henry David Thoreau is one of the icons of rugged American individualism. His memoirs of living in a self-build cabin on Ralph Waldo Emerson's Walden Pond still stand as a starting point for many reflections. As Thoreau was moving into his cabin, telegraph wires and railroad tracks were being strung and laid across a Westward-reaching America. Newspapers were springing up in their wakes.
What did Thoreau think of all this development?
On telegraphs:
We are in great hast to construct a magnetic telegraph from Maine to Texas; but Maine and Texas, it may be, have nothing important to communicate.
On the postal service:
I never received more than one or two letters in my life...that were worth the postage.
On railroads:
Men have an indistinct notion that if they keep up this activity of joint stocks and spades long enough all will at length ride somewhere, in next to no time, and for nothing; but though a crowd rushes to the depot, and the conductor shouts "All aboard!" when the smoke is blown away and the vapor condensed, it will be perceived that a few are riding, but the rest are run over.
Bloggers, vloggers, podcasters: Take heart! Smarter people than today's doubters have said these things in the past: "You have nothing to say, regardless of your ability to say it. Leave these things to the pros."
Fortunately, we didn't share Thoreau's view then and don't share these views now.
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