What was the age of optimism

Paul Ratner , Big Think. Take action on UpLink. Forum in focus. New toolkit protects users from thousands of unregulated mental health apps. Read more about this project. Explore context. Explore the latest strategic trends, research and analysis. In uncertain times, I usually expect the best. If something can go wrong for me, it will. I'm always optimistic about my future. I hardly ever expect things to go my way.

I rarely count on good things happening to me. Simply put, it reflects an explosion of pent-up optimism, and an implosion of doubt, that strikes to the core of the American experience.

Trying to win versus not to lose. Leading not retreating. Achieving not grieving. Creating not debating. In the days and weeks ahead, the "Now President" will unleash an unbridled demand for better news and better outcomes while fighting conventional convictions that have grounded Washington in petty politics and mired the media in personal distress.

It will not be an easy road, nor one without disappointments and failures that will activate the boo-birds to come out in full-throated protest. Some may be justified, as the wheels of change churn through the habit of inertia to discern the good from the bad, the necessary from the needless. Yet that won't likely discourage nor impede Trump, because his appeals to American's thirst for optimism will be punctuated with purpose and tweeted with regularity.

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Make direct phone calls to CEOs to redirect their corporate strategies with a carrot-and-stick appeal to mutual interest? Psychologically, it compels. Connecting to current inter national historiographical debate on the question of whether the First World War meant a disruption from the pre-war period or not, this article strives to prove that faith in scientific progress still prevailed in the s.

This is shown through the use of Belgium as a case study, which suggests that the generally adopted cultural pessimism in the post-war years did not apply to the public rhetoric of science in this country. The harmonizing effect of being digital is already apparent as previously partitioned disciplines and enterprises find themselves collaborating, not competing.

But more than anything, my optimism comes from the empowering nature of being digital. The access, the mobility, and the ability to effect change are what will make the future so different from the present. The information superhighway may be mostly hype today, but is an understatement about tomorrow.