Modern technological scale makes today’s speculative moment historically singular despite echoes of past debates

Evidence

These struggles have rhymes and echoes of the fin de siècle wars over the moral legitimacy of speculation. The scale and depth of modern technological transformations, however, make our current moment more of a singular event for the speculative imagination when considered from a longer historical perspective. — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities, 162

Today’s uncertain struggles for power still occur under the ominous shadow of financial markets, whose grip on everyday life is felt acutely in societies the world over. … The scale and depth of modern technological transformations, however, make our current moment more of a singular event for the speculative imagination when considered from a longer historical perspective. — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities, 251

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s standing interest in whether financialized modernity is continuous or discontinuous with prior eras of speculation. — connects to: Current tech enthusiasm parallels the late-1990s bubble dynamics — Nick Srnicek, Platform Capitalism, 27
• QUESTION: Worth chasing: what specifically about technological scale makes the current era singular rather than just a repeat of fin de siècle moral battles over speculation?
• corroborated: 3 independent passages support this claim — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities: Living With…, 162; Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities: Living with…, 251