I noticed a while ago that names of things these days say more about what they aren’t than about what they are. We live in the post-Cold-War era. We listen to alternative music and have post-modern architecture. The defining characteristic of Generation X seems to be that it’s not the yuppies.
So what era are we living in? Is there anything happening these days that we will be remembered for, or is this really the cultural and historical doldrums?
I’ve always wanted to coin a word or phrase that would catch on (“The Hundred Hours War” and “Bush the Younger” don’t seem to be doing it). So to name the current era I nominate “The Blah Epoque”. It refers, of course, to the “Belle Epoque” (1890 - 1914 France) and that sort of retro-reference is very trendy. But trendy retro-reference is an example of the sort of blahness that I’m talking about. That makes “The Blah Epoque” an ironically self-referential trendy retro-reference to retro-trendiness. And ironic self-reference is very trendy.
Anybody else care to take a stab at it. Is there anything actually happening these days?
The information age and the digital age are already in use, and pretty accurate. I think in general, you can’t come up with a good name of an age while your in it. (e.g. People who lived in the dark ages didn’t even know it, the dark ages were named by more enlightened people who lived later.)
As for “The Age of Electronics” and such, these designations usually seem to be social and political, rather than technological. We have a new kind of connectivity now, but do e-mail and the net somehow make us more connected than 20 years ago when everybody in the world was a phone call away (or Victorian London when you could send a letter across town in the morning and get the reply in the afternoon, at least in the Sherlock Holmes stories)? Alvin Toffler wrote a book called The Third Wave (about 20 years ago in fact), which argued that we’re entering an age of information (The first two waves were agriculture and industry). That’s kind of compelling, but it’s a bit grander in scope than I was thinking of.
Are there any particular fields going through a recognized movement these days, like impressionist painting or baroque music? And are these names granted at the time, or can you only see something’s context after it’s had a little chance to settle?
And how do you popularize things like this? Churchill had it easy. He just said “An iron curtain has descended over Europe.” and it caught on. Damn good turn of phrase, though.
Hey ppl, how about the Internet Age?? The Internet is what has has started to revolutionize the world 5-6 years ago, when lots of people started being interested in it. Think about what you wouldn’t have if the Internet didn’t exist!(results may vary)
On the same note, there would be no SDMB, for instance.
This is an IMHO topic, because this has no deifinite answer (sorry).
I like this title:
Age of Homogenization: We are becoming a more homgenous world. This is the end of the Renaissance, folks, and it spells the end of the nation-state. It also spells the end of the Federal-Industrial Revolution. Why? If you can access all you need from anywhere, you can live anywhere. If you can live anywhere, you will end up living nowhere, making centralized authority nigh impossible. Taxation is based upon the Feudal system, actually, and works best when the citizenry owns oxen and farmland. Then the taxes can be a percentage of total production. Of course, as society expands the tax system expands. But it’s all based on having a stable address. When that’s gone, taxes don’t work too well. So nations have two options: Become more service-oriented or die. Like capitalism: Provide something useful or get out. I think it’s a great thing. If you don’t, see me in GD.
That was a joke, right? Being homogenous means being the same throughout, like a pure form of an element. It is the opposite of being heterogenous, which is being different in places, like a piece of concrete or marble. I meant it in the sense that a difference in place is no longer the deciding factor in a difference in culture or even job, giving people more freedom to roam. Ah, read my post.
I was thinking almost exactly the opposite, The Age of Fragmentation. All my examples in the OP are about how people define things in terms of what they’re breaking away from, like a sort of institutionalized rebellion (contradiction that that is). And I guess I’m still looking at this in terms of social and artistic movements rather than political or technological ones.
I agree that the internet could be one of the defining artifacts of our age (I hope there are others, too), but what are we doing with it? Television became widespread during the 50s and 60s, but I don’t think of that as the Age of Television. Some might say we’re becoming more social through boards like this, some might say we’re becoming less social because we’re hunched over our keyboards instead of out in the world with real people.
One idea I read that I quite like is that e-mail brought back a little of the artistic tradition of personal correspondence. Does the act of writing an e-mail or a message board post make us clearer and more contemplative than instant methods like television and telephone? Or has the “quickening pace of modern life” I keep hearing about forced greater inaccuracies into our lives?
