There is a tendency for people to very often assess a new idea in familiar terms. I've left out the Internet in this set of examples, of course. The long term revolution of the Internet will not stem from what it does quicker or more conveniently, mind you, but from what it previously impossible and undreamt-of things it will make into commonplace reality tomorrow. A world that already understands the advantage of cheap rapid communication is a world that's ready to accept the simple proposition that electronic mail is just the same, but even cheaper and faster. In some quarters, of course, unmarried mothers still have pariah status over thirty years on.
Women continue to earn less than men.
The other point I wanted to underline however was that, even then , the acceptance of a change depends upon the extent to which people have already had the ground laid by what's gone before. This is why, of course, society is ready and able to digest ideas about trans-people that it wasn't ready to digest a mere decade ago. I first heard it mentioned, almost as a throwaway line, by Dr Michael Will of the Faculty of Law at the University of Geneva. Just before Christmas the forum's debate touched for a day or two on what to do about that fourth column on the UK birth certificate. Let's go back, in fact, to where your eyes glazed over at the thought of deleting the fourth column altogether.