What is New Actually?

Moments in time and New Models

I think my version of “the Roman Empire” is New York between 1975 and 1985: a decade I keep returning to because it seemed to produce new culture at an impossible density. It was not a prosperous time for most New Yorkers, but for those ten years, the city became one of the world’s great laboratories for cultural invention.

Hip-hop, punk, contemporary art, and much of what we now recognize as contemporary culture were all emerging in that same compressed period.

That period has shaped how I view the world, and I can feel its influence waning. What still mesmerizes me is not just the art or the scenes themselves, but the concentration of cultural conditions that allowed so much to begin at once.

My point is that there are certain moments when the new actually happens, and I keep trying to understand what conditions make that possible. What must be present for new culture and new ideas to take hold: density, affordability, boredom, risk, public space, shared discomfort, accident?

We are in a moment of enormous technological change, and yet culturally it often feels redundant. Fascism, robber barons, oligarchs, wars, genocide, feudalism: humanity has already lived through these patterns and, at least in theory, decided they are bad choices. Yet here we are, recycling old political arrangements and even rewatching Disney animations as live-action remakes.

I just think newness is not something we control, no matter how badly we want it. But we can design the conditions where it is more likely to appear, and that may be the deeper promise of the library: not as a nostalgic institution, but as one of the few remaining public models for making room.

That question is what keeps bringing me back to libraries. If new culture needs friction, proximity, and permission to linger, then the library may be one of the last civic institutions built to hold those conditions without demanding that people buy something first.

Anythink, the public library system in Adams County, Colorado, is useful here because it treats the library less like a warehouse for books and more like a designed environment for curiosity, gathering, and self-directed learning. The name itself asks patrons to imagine the library as a place where almost anything can start: a skill, a friendship, a project, a question, a different version of public life.

The United States is often reluctant to build these kinds of social situations equitably. We praise innovation, but we tend to privatize the rooms where innovation happens. Cafés, coworking spaces, conferences, campuses, clubs, restaurants, and ticketed events. If you cannot pay, if you do not already belong, or if you need a place to simply exist without being moved along, the invitation narrows quickly. That is why the library is so important. It is one of the few places where the public is still allowed to become a public.