"I Can't Understand It"

"I can't understand it. I can't even understand the people who can understand it."
Queen Juliana, Queen of Netherlands 1948-1980 (1909 - 2004), from The Quotations Page

I won't make fun of Queen Juliana. Her life spanned a remarkable period. Electricity had been been the title feature of the World's Columbian Exhibition's Electricity Building 11 years before. By the year of her birth, electric lights lit up the St. Louis World's Fair, as a sort of shining achievement of the Industrial Age.

In her later years, she could have read histories of the Industrial Age on the Web.

Automobiles changed from the toys of rich men to a contemporary equivalent of a horse-and-wagon.

Television supplanted radio - which was a new development in its day.

And there was penicillin, the dissolution of Euro-colonial empires, pop-up toasters, spaceships, ballpoint pens, polio vaccines, the advent of rock and roll, robots, microwave ovens, helicopters: and things are still changing.

I rather like living in a world where 'you blink, and you'll miss something:' but not everybody's like that.

The Lemming and change:

• "Change, American Culture, Trilobites, Humanity's History, and the Big Picture"