Tape Noise Diary

Mister Narrative of the Decade

This is the type of post/article you’d start seeing in the month of December, but iMomus got ahead and takes a look at 2000 so far, the noughties. He talks about design, music, and the post-car society. But of note is his commentary on geopolitics, and the embedded video called the Rise of the Rest(title of a Fareed Zakaria op-ed), which presents a series of data and info graphs about how the non-western world will take prominence in the new millennium. From the iMomus post:

The big picture I see this decade is the decline of Western self-confidence. If the 90s witnessed plenty of “irrational exuberance” in a “New World Order” following the West’s triumph over its Cold War opponents, the 00s saw feeble attempts to define Islam as a worthy opponent, and a spate of misguided wars “justified” by the “wake-up call” of 9/11. But a cave somewhere in Afghanistan isn’t the Kremlin, and Bin Laden isn’t Stalin. Despite a naked neo-imperialism posited on an unholy alliance between Samuel Huntington’s Clash of Civilisations and the right-wing appropriation of liberal ideas like human rights and democracy, the neo-cons’ New American Century lasted about five years. It was rapidly replaced by a more powerful meme: the rise of the rest, and particularly India and China.

via Kottke