Two themes were coming back again and again: (1) Some things did not really change over hundreds or even thousands of years and (2) some things changed very quickly.

A look at the Christian hardware and software is informative. I hope that theologians excuse my use of terminology.

The Christian hardware includes churches, altars, windows, frescoes or statues. A 12th century Catholic would be wondering what happened to Jesus on the cross and the statues of saints in a Protestant church, but it wouldn’t be all that different.

You can also consider the Christian software such as the bible, the liturgy or the prayers. Obviously, there are differences between Orthodox, Catholic or Presbyterian churches but inside the individual traditions, the changes are not that significant. But then again, there were times (think of Calvin, Zwingli and Luther) when things changed quickly within mere decades.

• What do we know about societies today?

Personally, I find it quite fascinating to think about all the levers which change our societies and there are a couple of things to say:

• Our society consists of multiple layers such as a physical layer, an idea or ideology layer and a government layer among many others.
• Each layer has a different speed of change. For example, legal systems are stable as they are designed for stability.
• We have seen rapid changes in various times. Large gains in life quality were achieved in the early 20th century. Urbanization and industrialization in Europe were largely happening in the 19th century.

Layers of society

 I like to think about layers of society. For example, we have a built environment for water, electricity or transport. Many of the roads are based on the old Roman transport links. There is not that much that has changed over the centuries as rivers, mountains or valleys have not moved.  

If you look at the energy transmission lines, it seems likely that the layout of today’s grid will be the layout of the grid in 200 years with some additional lines and energy storage capacities. Check out The Energy and Industry Geography Lab maintained by the JRC to see today’s networks.

Our ideological layer is also remarkably stable. In the West, we have a liberal democracy with human rights as a source of legitimacy. In this context, you might like Onri Boehm’s book Radical Universalism which discusses among others the sources of legitimacy of our society.

If we look at the information layer, we have seen a number of technologies which have changed how we live such as radio, television, telegraph, the internet or the telephone. Tim Wu recounts the different technologies in “The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires” and takes the perspective of the entrepreneurs.

Differential speed

In general, it is quite difficult to assess the speed of social change as outlined in “Are we living in a time of particularly rapid social change? And how might we know?” How would you even start constructing a data set to analyze this question.

It is somehow obvious that many parts of our society are quite stable. Take language as an example. The median rate at which a language transitions between different stages in the grammaticalization cycle of definite and indefinite articles is approximately once every 1,000 years. It is an interesting paper if you have learnt Latin in school and ever wondered how languages and those articles are changing. Talking about Rome. Roman law is the basis for the civil law system which looks also quite stable as it is designed for stability.

Other parts of our societies change quite frequently. The recent developments in artificial intelligence are a good case for an industry which changed rapidly. It is interesting case study to see how conflicts arise when parts of society move at different speeds.

Periods of rapid change

There is an interesting history book about the 19th century written by Jürgen Osterhammel. It starts with the Industrial Revolution and ends with WWI. It was a period which has seen industrialization, urbanization, revolutions, information networks but also the start of tourism, the estalblishment of museums in its current form and world exhibitions. It was also the start of the bureaucratic state. It must have been a crazy time.

In general, it seems that some changes led to unexpected changes which are often unexpected. The challenges around the standardization of time helped Albert Einstein to develop Relativity Theory. The creation of a limited company helped to mobilize more capital. The printing press was instrumental for the Reformation. Double-entry bookkeeping is a simple invention but the basis for how the modern economy runs.

There is a lot more to say about social change and I might be wrong about some of the observations. Let me know how things can be seen differently.