Its just the information overload environment produces more triggers. Reduce news and social media off consumption and it feels much less chaotic.
Info overload especially constantly looking at problems above the pay grade/skill level are just going to screw with the head.
Think about your first job, did you try to understand or solve everything the team faced when there was chaos? Initially you might try, but over time you settle into a role where you fit and tune other things out.
These days whenever I feel the urge go down some social media/news generated rabbit hole, I just open Khan Academy or ChatGPT and start talking/looking up some solved problem. Not the unsolvable stuff. It turns out more satisfying than consuming news or social media stuff. Other option is a good game. Changes my mood a lot.
How is it now more chaotic than the smartphone and internet revolution combined with the war on terror?
How was the internet revolution more chaotic than the fall of the iron curtain, and its aftermath?
How was the fall of iron curtain more chaotic than the cold war?
How was the cold war more chaotic than WW2? etc etc
The US was almost overthrown by a Coup in 1933.[1] There were huge civil revolts in the clashes between organized labor and the Donor class since the start of the Industrial Revolution. There have been organized systems of repressing most of humanity for all of recorded history, and I don't expect it to change any time soon.
Either things have changed further since Y2K, or we are still watching that play out. No doubt a major source of chaos is ad-driven (quantity of clicks/attention versus quality) media and their consequent, mostly unchecked, overrun by bots.
LLM's are a factor not in that work, and its effects are still playing out.
I believe that the very concept of meaning is being challenged by such "derivative" work. We used to write to create and convey meaning, not just to produce "a reasonable facsimile."
Change is accelerating, challenging our human reasoning and belief/value systems to cope.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20052407
https://www.edge.org/conversation/clay_shirky-newspapers-and...
Compared to the last 1000 years? No. Last 10 years? Maybe a little bit more.
There's a correlation between economic inequality and political instability. Money buys power. When someone controls both money and politics, the only response by the unpowered is violence.
Inequality triggers because of technology. We're seeing a tech boom lately. This triggers waves in economic and political stability, which triggers waves of violence.
Recent lockdown, crypto, and climate change adds more ripples - so you're looking at overlapping waves of change soon.
e.g. Arab nations are highly dependent on oil and are screwed if oil prices drop, but the Russian war bought them a few more years of stability, which they invest into other things. So the waves can overlap in ways that counter each other.
The only difference is that now everything has more visibility because internet.
That’s why it looks and feels like it is a special time. But it’s not.