1910: The year the modern world lost its mind

Early Industrial Tech and the Wright Brothers

• Several comments dig into how “bicycle mechanics” were actually working in the high tech of the time: precision bicycle manufacturing, wind tunnels, propeller theory, wing-warping patents, etc.
• This is used to reframe them as serious technologists, not lucky tinkerers, and to show how the bicycle boom fed directly into aviation.

Cultural Shocks, Art, and Myths

• The Rite of Spring riot prompts discussion of similar culture clashes (Astor Place Riot, Schoenberg’s Skandalkonzert).
• Some argue the famous “all hell broke loose” accounts were heavily mythologized; later performances went smoothly and the music is now seen as accessible and exhilarating.
• Classical music and opera then were mass culture, not just for elites.

Time, Speed, and Loss of Freedom

• Ancient complaints about sundials are compared to modern scheduling and time discipline: “what becomes measurable becomes controllable.”
• Some see clocks and per‑hour scheduling as eroding organic rhythms of life (work until done, then rest), a theme extended to cars, trains, and “diseases of speed.”
• Pascal’s line about being unable to sit quietly is revisited in a world full of digital distraction and loneliness.

Noise, Cities, and Somatic Anxiety

• Historical “neurasthenia” is linked by some to brutal city conditions: overcrowding, constant traffic noise, smoke, lack of sewers, thin social ties for new migrants.
• Others discuss modern analogs: low‑frequency industrial noise, trains, planes, and “The Hum”; sometimes complaints are psychosomatic, sometimes there’s a real but hard‑to-diagnose physical source.

Drugs, Radioactivity, and Being ‘Coked Out’

• Several note widespread early-20th‑century use of cocaine, morphine, and later amphetamines, suggesting this likely amplified anxiety and volatility.
• Others highlight naive enthusiasm for radioactivity (radium products, shoe-store X‑rays), later replaced by fear after accidents, as an example of oscillating public sentiment toward new tech.

Communication Revolutions and Continuity

• Books like The Victorian Internet are cited to show the telegraph created many “modern” phenomena: low‑latency markets, online‑style chatter, long-distance romance, legal debates about remote contracts.
• Commenters argue today’s internet/AI wave fits into a long chain of 2%/year growth “revolutions” rather than a singular break with history.

Cars, Suburbs, and Modernity’s Trade‑offs

• Multiple threads lament car‑driven urban form, sprawl (e.g., New Jersey), and the externalization of costs (noise, pollution, climate).
• Some contrast tribal or premodern lifeways with industrial modernity, arguing our value system is self‑justifying; others stress the undeniable gains in medicine and comfort.
• The article’s “we lost our minds” framing is questioned: were we actually losing humanity, or just struggling through a massive material and social transition whose benefits and harms we still haven’t equilibrated?