The Right Side of History - by Venkatesh Rao - Contraptions

Yesterday, my postdoctoral advisor from 20 years ago (we exchange notes every few years) pinged me with a link to an Atlantic article mentioning a 2020 post of mine. It felt a bit surreal, a recently closed chapter of my life colliding with a much older closed chapter. A certain clarity of purpose attended both those chapters of my life (2004-06 postdoccing and 2007-2020 old-school blogging). I kinda knew what I was doing, and enjoyed a certain confidence that I was doing the right thing. That whole headspace feels surreal now, like those chapters happened to somebody else. My shorthand for this feeling is the phrase being on the right side of history. It’s a feeling I’ve lost in recent years, along with most of you. That doesn’t mean I feel I’m on the wrong side. It means I can’t see meaningful sides at all. History, as it winds its way through the Gramsci Gap, is non-orientable, so to speak. I take the phrase to mean right in both senses of the word. There is a logic to history which

Yesterday, my postdoctoral advisor from 20 years ago (we exchange notes every few years) pinged me with a link to an Atlantic article mentioning a 2020 post of mine. It felt a bit surreal, a recently closed chapter of my life colliding with a much older closed chapter. A certain clarity of purpose attended both those chapters of my life (2004-06 postdoccing and 2007-2020 old-school blogging). I kinda knew what I was doing, and enjoyed a certain confidence that I was doing the right thing. That whole headspace feels surreal now, like those chapters happened to somebody else. My shorthand for th