History always repeats itself

They say history repeats itself, certainly the current financial crisis has a lot in common with the great depression of the 1930s, greed was to blame then as it is now, and then as now, the crisis was global in nature. Personally I'm finding the parallels quite interesting, so I'm reading a fair bit about the History of Things. You should too.

History for most of the people I know is something that they learned at school, it was one of the easy (or difficult) subjects that everbody either loved or hated, sadly I think most people probably hated it. In today's times surely more time spent in the computer lab, or learning a trade would seem to be a better use of time.

That is an opinion I don't agree with, I think if history os studied a lot about human civilization starts to make sense. Take the situation in Mexico, Colombia, or the US with gangs having so much power or ability to cause major problems.

Compare gang warfare today with the 1920s and gangsters like Al Capone, or gangs in London or Sicily in the 1800s, or powerful trading gangs of the medieval ages, even the Roman Empire wasn't immune to their vice-like grip on society. Reading about the History of Gangs makes you realize that wherever there are people, gangs and unsocial behavior follows.

My hope is that we fully embrace the computer age that we'll see more peace, and less war, more equality, and less greed, but I know from reading about every major revolution in civilization that nothing much changes, although for the first time ever, when I was reading the history of the internet I started to believe maybe this time things might be different.

For the first time in recorded history people from all walks of live have a voice, and in many cases just as much ability to be heard than in the past when only those with power or money could have their voices heard.

The incredible effect that social networking is having, the wonderful power of blogging, even the ability to twitter is making a difference and politicians are starting to notice. I think we might be onto something here, lets hope history starts to change, perhaps not repeat itself quite so often.