what a difference half a century makes!

A person born in 1492 could have witnessed in their lifetime: 

• an extraordinary flowering of artistic imagination concerning form and perspective in painting, sculpture, literature, architecture;
• the Reformation led by Luther and Calvin, ramifying out into almost every subculture and presaging the way religious difference would be formulated for centuries thereafter;
• the invention of the watch, enabling an unheralded fine-tuning in the measurement and coordination of daily time periods;
• observations of space and experimentation with lenses that would lead to the creation of the telescope; and
• the dissemination of the first newspaper, initiating the effects of widespread information-sharing within a community. 

Failure of Nerve: Leadership in the Age of the Quick Fix p30