Welcome to the Modern World

I realized in watching the inauguration and Obama’s speech that he is the first modern president, the first president of the 21st century. Bush was very much a typical, almost the ultimate, president of the old guard, the old mentality.
But so many things have changed in the last few years, everything from the internet and the ways we communicate to technology and energy to the types of wars we fight. And I feel that a large part of America, and probably the rest of the world, have been operating under the assumption that things aren’t substantially different, we’re just using different tools.
But the tools we have are so drastically different that they alter everything about how we interact and look at the world. I feel like things have been changing so quickly over the last five or so years that knowing where we are has been impossible- the state we’ve been in is the state of constant change.
But Obama is the first major political leader from any country that I’ve heard presenting the issues in terms of how radically new the challenges and solutions will be.
It’s not that this is a new idea- as he said, the same human characteristics are needed to deal with it as they have ever been- it’s just that every few hundred years, the playing field changes so much that we have to change how we think. And when these changes first occur, the initial response is always fear and resistance. It’s not until someone comes along and openly embraces these ideas and changes that people can get over their initial reticence. It was true of Copernicus and the heliocentric theory of the galaxy, it was true of Galileo, it was true of the Gutenberg printing press, it was true of the Industrial Revolution, and it’s true of the new world of the internet.
You can’t operate in secrecy if everyone around the world can see what you do (Guantanamo).
You can’t wage a war like it used to be done (Iraq).
And you can’t shy away from the technologies of the future (gas and car companies).
Obama seems to understand and embrace these necessities. And everything about his words and his demeanor says that he is ready to help this country embrace and not fear them.