How fast does stuff change . . . . .The Big Question

I have just been thinking, and thought I need to write one of those big questions again before the masses get distracted by a passing seagull and wander off into the night never to return. So what sort of big Question will I write and this is it . . . .  How fast does stuff change, the Big Question. I know you are all thinking WHAT? Exactly what is he on about now. Well it may all seem a bit abstract but it is a really interesting question. You see change is all relative, to some things change slowly and to others they change really fast and the same is true in nature. You see a Mayfly lives for about a day so to a Mayfly a day is an entire lifetime and to us it’s a day.

Now the thing is these days almost everyone over here in the decadent west has a mobile phone or a computer and any small child would just assume that these things have been about for like ever. But tell that small child that stuff like computers and mobile phones were something that just did not exist when you were young and they will look confused.  In fact most modern technology, stuff like satellite navigation or touch screen things were devices from Star Trek and even Star Trek is old to some . . . . If I said. . .  Its Life Jim but not as we know it to a small child it will tell me to ****** off because they will not have a clue what I’m on about. . . add . . .its the Engines Jim they will nay take it and they will think I’m an Idiot. Television is a relatively new device, and it was only 1903 just over 100 years ago when man made his first powered flight. Folk don’t give aeroplanes a second thought these days and there are millions of the damn things moving people and things all over the world.

But all these things are changes; things that quietly happen around us, most of us don’t really notice these sorts of changes so the big changes like shifting continental shelves or the fact the Sun in real terms has a rather limited life span in relation to the likes of the universe don’t even register as change. It is estimated that over 99% of all life that has lived on planet Earth has become extinct and it is said that about a dozen species of living things become extinct every day. But we don’t notice these changes.

Even in towns, at one time most houses had a fireplace where folk would set fire to lumps of coal and roast the cat but this is not so common in the big metropolis’s and I am told there are children who have never seen an open fire. . . YICKS I must be old (we still have one).  I can say that for many years on my trips up north to Scotland I used to travel on the Flying Scotsman and Steam was the norm until they introduced those huge great Deltic Class 55 trains and look what happened to them when was the last time anyone saw one of them. Folk used to have to use tin baths and an outside toilet. In the town I previously lived in I have talked to some of the older members of the community who remember stuff like that. These are things that have happened in a single lifetime. So change is important because it would be damn useful to know what exactly is likely to change in the next thirty years or so (after that I will be too old or away with the fairies so will not care anyway)

So there you have it another big Question . . . . . . . . . sort of not answered a bit.

I think the best think to do is to think of mankind as a tiny blink of light that is almost unnoticeable in the huge voids of the universe. Well of course I do not include myself in that tiny blink I’m a camera flash (an old fashioned fixed plate camera flash. they were real flashes not like digital cameras they are rubbish).