Exhibit One: the semiotic gutting of phrases like “since 9/11”

I think it’s widely accepted that my parents’ generation, or at least quite a lot of them, participated in a sexual and chemical revolution that they enjoyed at the time without foreseeing its consequences–STDs, a wasteful drug war, the embourgeoisment of all their good music, and a lot of boring retrospective movies. Hideous design themes. The backswing of the Eighties. I could go on.

Not that there weren’t benefits, of course, and I’m glad I was born after they became widespread. I think I’m well-suited for my own generation’s information revolution. But is any revolution on this scale without cost? What are we not foreseeing?