Political Internet? What a Wondrous Web we weave

Abstract

A human life is relatively short, let’s say 100 years to be optimistic. As one generation follows another, each has unique experiences that together shape its view of the world. Each decade gives rise to moods and opinions that are in many ways quite different to those of earlier times. Historians are familiar with this process and seek to give labels to each era in human development. The Renaissance, the Dark Ages, the war years, the slump, the postwar boom, the years of revolution, and so on. These labels are readily available tags through which we sum up our overview of the world at a particular moment. They are one-dimensional and for those who look in more detail they are no doubt such sweeping generalisations that they become highly inaccurate. Nonetheless, these generalisations survive because they speak to the real experiences of people who lived through the era itself.