Activity

Once we know how to identify conventions, we’ll find them everywhere. They manifest as customs, the tacit rules of a community. Customs can be so invisible within a group that we notice them only upon encountering alternative ways of life. “There are probably young men from Nevada,” writes the jour…

But cultural changes are never random, nor do they befall us as plagues. Trends happen because individuals choose to take up new behaviors. And when we examine the history of cultural change, there are clear patterns in how humans move from one practice to another. Sixty years before the moptop, so…

By contrast technological change is very logical, as innovations provide greater efficiency and conveniences at lower costs. Our ancestors adopted the spinning wheel not as a “fad,” but because it shortened the time required to twist fibers into yarn. From this perspective cultural change appears b…