In Defense of the Aughts

Conventional wisdom is that the last 10 years, labeled the "Decade from Hell" by Time magazine, were a complete disaster. But The Washington Post's Ezra Klein argues that the criticism may be short-sighted. "In the grand sweep of history... I'd bet the Aughts will be remembered more as the age when the Internet transformed everyday existence than anything else," Klein writes. "It's the age of Google, of Wikipedia, of blogs and video on demand and YouTube and e-readers and GPS in our pockets and email everywhere we go and online connectivity from airplanes and Christmas shopping from Amazon." According to Klein, while the decade was "psychologically difficult," because of lethal terrorist attacks and a financial collapse, "the impulse to remain calm in the face of technological change is also an invitation to downplay the things that change our everyday lives the most. And for all that the decade's terror attacks and wars and bubbles did us terrible damage, none of them did nearly as much to transform the average American's everyday life as the rise of the Net."