World War I Centenary

With the centenary of the start of World War 1 occurring a couple days ago, there have been numerous retrospectives published about the war and its impact on events today.  This recent article by Jonah Goldberg sums up most of the points being made, which match up with a post made by neo-neocon almost two years ago.  A lot of people seem to share the sentiment made in the latter headline, that we have never really recovered from World War 1.  The popular perception of the war is that it was a unique turning point in history that changed the world in ways most other wars throughout history have not.  I have come to wonder how accurate this perception really is.  If an objective, outside observer with no previous knowledge of human history studied us, would they agree that World War 1 is truly the historical fulcrum we perceive it to be, or would they come to the conclusion that the popular perception of World War 1 is just a meme that hasn't died, and there is truly nothing unique about the war in relation to the rest of human history.  That is a question I hope to answer in several blog posts over the next couple days.