Charles Stross writing for BBC News:

We've had agriculture for about 12,000 years, towns for eight to 10,000 years, and writing for about 5,000 years. But we're still living in the dark ages leading up to the dawn of history.

Don't we have history already, you ask? Well actually, we don't. We know much less about our ancestors than our descendants will know about us.

Indeed, we've acquired bad behvioural habits - because we're used to forgetting things over time. In fact, collectively we're on the edge of losing the ability to forget.

Stross describes a world -- not too far off, where every moment of every individual's life is recorded and where 100 kilograms (or less) of diamond-based storage can store an entire century's worth of experience for the population of the planet. One of the commenters on this thread over at Dean's World suggested that people living in the present age are not experiencing the same level of dramatic change as people who were born in the 1870's. The fact that the developments Stross is talking about strike us as even a little plausible confirms for me that all eras of change that humanity has faced to date are just a blip compared to what's coming.