What our current tech-saturated moment has in common with the age of bicycles, Model Ts, and nervous breakdowns
In 1910, the world was gripped by the whir of engines, the shimmer of skyscrapers, and the idea that maybe—just maybe—modern life was moving too fast for the human mind to handle. In 2025, the scenery has changed—electric cars instead of Model Ts, AI chatbots instead of Kodak cameras—but the sensation? Uncannily familiar.
This piece was inspired by Derek Thompson’s excellent essay, “1910: The Year the Modern World Lost Its Mind”, which explores how the early 20th century’s technological vertigo mirrors our own moment. Reading it felt less like a history lesson and more like holding up a mirror to 2025.
This is the year the modern world, in its infinite wisdom, decided to sprint into the future with no map, no seatbelt, and a half-charged phone battery. We’re living at warp speed, and everyone’s nervously checking to see if anyone else feels queasy.
1. The Speed Problem
If the early 1900s had the bicycle craze, we’ve got the everything craze. The 2020s are a blur of quarterly product launches, algorithm updates, and overnight viral trends. Your phone isn’t just in your pocket—it’s in your bloodstream. News cycles collapse into hours; global events live and die in the span of a long lunch break.
Like in 1910, speed isn’t just mechanical—it’s existential. We aren’t moving faster to get somewhere. We’re moving faster so we don’t feel like we’re falling behind.
2. The Nervous Breakdown Economy
A century ago, doctors diagnosed “American Nervousness” among white-collar workers who couldn’t keep pace with the new tempo of life. Today, we’ve just swapped the sanatorium for Slack. “Burnout” is our word for it, but the symptoms are eerily similar: fatigue, anxiety, a sense of being perpetually “on call.”
Our workplaces run on real-time messages, constant notifications, and the lurking fear that AI might be both your assistant and your replacement. If in 1910 the railway clerk feared the telegraph machine, in 2025 the copywriter fears the autocomplete suggestion.
3. The Artistic Backlash
In 1910, Stravinsky, Kandinsky, and Picasso reached into the deep past to make sense of the machine age. In 2025, artists are doing the same—except the “past” might be analog film cameras, vinyl records, or hand-drawn zines. The hottest design aesthetic right now is “slightly broken,” as if imperfection itself is a protest against AI’s cold precision.
The more our tools can flawlessly mimic reality, the more we crave something they can’t—flaws, accidents, and human fingerprints.
4. Competing Theories of Human Nature
In the early 20th century, Max Weber thought modern work ethic was an extension of religious discipline. Freud thought it was a repression of primal urges. In 2025, we’re still arguing the same point—just swap “religion” for “productivity culture” and “primal urges” for “doomscrolling.”
Is the AI revolution the ultimate expression of human ingenuity or the ultimate suppression of it? Are we using these tools to expand our potential—or outsourcing so much of ourselves that we forget what we’re capable of?
Conclusion: The Loop We Can’t Escape
History isn’t a straight line—it’s a loop. In 1910, the world gasped at the pace of change, feared the toll it would take on the mind, and questioned whether our shiny new machines were serving us or hollowing us out. In 2025, we’re running the same circuit, just on faster, smarter, and more invisible tracks.
We tell ourselves that our anxieties are unique, that no one before has felt the strange cocktail of awe and dread that comes with watching the future arrive early. But the truth is, every generation has looked into the whirring heart of its own inventions and wondered if it built a better world—or just built a bigger cage.
The choice before us now isn’t whether technology will change us—it already has. The choice is whether we can meet that change with the same mix of creativity, resistance, and humanity that our predecessors brought to their own dizzying moment. If 1910 proved anything, it’s that even in the age of vertigo, we can still plant our feet—if we remember to look up from the blur and decide where we actually want to go.
Because if we don’t, “the year we lost our minds” won’t be a moment in history. It’ll be a permanent address.
Then & Now: Technology, Anxiety, and Culture
| Category | 1910 | 2025 |
|---|---|---|
| Breakthrough Technologies | Automobiles, airplanes, bicycles, skyscrapers, phonograph, Kodak camera | AI chatbots, EVs & self-driving cars, drones, mixed reality headsets, quantum computing |
| Pace of Change | Decades of industrial innovations compressed into a few years | Continuous, globalized tech updates delivered instantly |
| Cultural Anxiety | “American Nervousness” (neurasthenia), fear of machines dehumanizing society | Burnout, “always-on” culture, fear of AI replacing human work |
| Moral Panic | Women on bicycles seen as socially and sexually disruptive | AI-generated art/writing seen as undermining human creativity |
| Artistic Reaction | Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring, Kandinsky’s abstraction, Picasso’s primitivism | Analog revival (vinyl, film photography), glitch aesthetics, AI art critique |
| Intellectual Debate | Weber: work ethic aligns with modern capitalism; Freud: modernity represses human instincts | Productivity culture vs. digital well-being; tech optimism vs. tech doom |
| Public Sentiment | Awe at progress, fear of losing humanity | Excitement about AI’s potential, anxiety about its societal cost |