Retrospective Man and the Huamn Condition

Youngblood presents an interesting point that much of what is the cureent interactions in our life is often just a look into the past rather than the future. It's noticeable that much of the popular music today is just a shiny repackaged composition that was made hundreds of years ago. The school systems are usually preoccupied with teaching us many of the foundations and functions that were created in the past , and yet they omit many of the cutting edge developments of the day. It can be said that many of these upstanding individuals in the past have given us the tools to think for the future, but what about paying attention to the development of new tools in society? It is usually the case that we "rediscover" important discoveries years after they have been published or written. If we look at the case of genetics with Gregory Mendel's work, his ideas were rediscovered almost a generation later. If we were to use technology to propagate important ideas, perhaps this concept of redundant discovery would disappear and people's efforts would be spent building upon that work rather than a figurative reinvention of the wheel.