Hasn't Pynchon already done it decades ago in Gravity's Rainbow? There is a temptation to overestimate the changes which one is living through.
>From a later perspective different "ages" aren't
necessarily all that different.
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Gravity's Rainbow was one attempt to grasp the thing. You'll agree, I'm sure, that it's not the final word on the topic of modernity - no more than the V2 rockets Pynchon describes were the final word on surface to surface missile technology.
Of course, you're right to say that "ages" bear many similarities to each other. In quite a few ways, I'm not all that different from a reasonably comfortable Roman bureaucrat living, perhaps, in Brundisium (always liked the sound of that).
And yet, it would be a mistake to go too far with this 'nothing has really changed' attitude. Unlike my Roman, I live in a world in which a total collapse -- not just of my civilization but of an entire world system -- has moved from the speculative pages of dystopian novels into the neon illuminated dark of day. This, among other things, separates us -- my Roman and me -- from each other in, I'd argue, spectacularly interesting ways.
.d.
Let us weep in somber contemplation of the scientific and brutal destiny of the Greek brothers.
...................... http://monroelab.net/blog/