Why the Past Feels Slower Than It Was - Ada Palmer

Ada Palmer discusses her research on the video game Civilization (Civ) and its impact on historical perception. She notes that Civ is the world's number one teacher of history, having shipped 70 million copies, and reaches a massive audience since 65% of people with access to technology play video games. The game structures time progression to suggest that historical periods moved at different speeds - with turns representing 50 years in antiquity, 25 years in medieval times, 10 years during the industrial revolution, and just 1 year in modernity. This design implies that as much change happens in one modern year as happened in 50 ancient years. Palmer identifies this as a fundamental misrepresentation that extends beyond gaming into educational materials like textbooks. She challenges this narrative by pointing to historical scholarship, noting that whenever historians examine any specific decade from any time period and location, that period feels as dynamic and fast-moving as our contemporary era. This suggests that the perception of accelerating historical time is a modern bias rather than an accurate reflection of how change actually occurred in different eras.