The exponential rate of technological growth

Sometimes its easy to miss the degree to which our cultural and technological environment is changing when we are participating in it on a day to day basis. I recently ran across a video from NOAA that brings the degree of some of these changes home.

This is a video of all air traffic around the world in a 24 hour period. Really makes an impression.

A friend of mine had an interesting comment about it: "There is an odd thought I sometimes have that some of our problems are due to our evolutionary and cultural heritage in small groups and villages, and a simple inability to comprehend the scale and simultaneity of the modern world. we can intellectually manipulate information on large scale issues, but we don't really comprend things at a gut level. little videos like this seem to make the scale more real, at least for me."

All i can say is that it makes the scale of human endeavor a little more real for me as well.