I have pretty well come to the end of the audio book "What Hath God Wrought?" by a retired professor of history, Daniel Walker Howe, who was a professor simultaneously at Oxford University in Britain and UCLA here. I learned listening to the tales of endless squabbles between US politicians in the years between 1815 and 1848 that, for an outside amateur like me, not much has changed. The politician that I came to know best often said that what seemed to be the issue was never the actual issue that occupied the thinking and energies of the decision-makers. I urge others who feel that our country is in terrible shape to read or listen to Howe's history. We do not currently have politicians dueling to the death with swords or pistols or punching each other out in the halls of the legislature.
Many of the issues that occupied the minds of the legislators and judges back there are still with us today. What does the constitution allow? What does it forbid? Should the federal government engage in this or that practice?
Professor Howe often returns to the theme of transportation and communication. The invention of the steam engine and its widespread use in railroads changed what can be accomplished and how quickly to a very great extent. It was mind-boggling that people and goods could now be transported over distances at speeds that had never been possible before. Sure, today's speeds are much greater but we have come to expect rapid transport so a plane flight of 23 hours is indeed a long, cramped performance but it is still true that we can travel around the globe in less than a day.
The telegraph was used by Samuel Morse, inventor and artist, to transmit information much more quickly than people had ever experienced before. Again, today's speeds of chatting and instant messaging and use of satellites for continuous tv from the other side of the globe seem like old news and what we have come to expect. The speeds of information travel provided by the new telegraph were not expected, were unprecedented and were astonishing. Just this evening, we watched on a web cam(era) as friends in Key West chatted with buddies in a bar. We are impressed but we are not astonished.
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Bill
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