History of things can surprise!

New technologies seem odd at first but eventually come to seem natural. The Internet and the World Wide Web are new enough to most of us online that we can recall them as novelties, but now are part of everyday life. The process by which technological novelties come to seem natural has been termed "naturalization:. I came across some examples recently.

Before the Civil War there was no standard currency in the United States. The "greenbacks" issued by the Union to deal with the financial crisis created by the war were the first national currency. Prior to the war, many banks issued their own currencies.

Before the Civil War there was no standard for the design of the flag of the United States. Flags had stars and stripes, but the stars on a blue field were in different patterns and the blue fields of different sizes in flags taken into battle by different units of the Union forces. Indeed, early in the Civil War units of the Union and Confederacy sometimes were taken for units of the other force as their flags were mistaken one for another.

Things that seemed natural in the past may no longer seem natural. In Constantinople the general population would often discuss matters of religious dogma in detail. There could be riots in the streets over decisions of the church hierarchy on points of dogma. That too seemed natural to the inhabitants of Constantinople, although it seems strange to us today.

Things that seem natural in one culture may not in another. Governments calculate the inflation rate based on price changes in a "market basket" of goods and services. When I lived in Chile, which at the time was experiencing very high rates of inflation that made life difficult for lots of people, the newspapers would cover the decisions as to the composition of the market basket of goods on which the government would calculate the inflation rate; common citizens would follow the discussion and argue whether the decision was good or bad. It all seemed quite exceptional to my Yank cultural biases.