When did modern life begin? That is, when was the last time in history when we can truly say “Those people lived in a different era, and life was different back then”? Your answer can be entirely subjective, but give reasons you came to that conclusion.
I’ll give my opinion after a smattering of other responses have been posted.
The 1920’s would be my guess. It’s when modern technology really started to take off and it had rather progressive ideals considering what came right before and after it.
Early 20th Century.
Electricity, telecommunications, autos, refrigeration (and modern food distribution/storage techniques.)
Essentially, at the time horses became rare in the cities.
At some point, people may point to the last pre-internet and pre-cell phone explosion years in a similar manner.
Late 19th century, IMHO. Travel became faster and easier, communication was becoming faster and more efficient. Clothing and other items began to be mass-produced. Corporations got their start during the US Civil War and have been a major influence on culture and economics ever since. Women’s liberation and equality movements in general were in (very) early stages. The health movement began. Science and medicine was making great advances. People began to marry for love, not money or family arrangements. I think the events of the late 19th century have shaped our lives quite a bit, actually.
I thought refridgeration was later than that, at least in the modern (and widespread) sense.
I can also see how some might see the internet and cell phones as being the start of the modern age.
Personally, I think I’d have to pick the 1950s, for the following reasons:
-One could feed one’s family with a trip to one store, without growing, kneading, choking, or plucking anything. Add to this widespread refridgeration, TV dinners, etc.
-One could clothe one’s family without knowing how to spin thread, use a loom, or even sew – clothing off the rack was readily available and affordable.
-Technicolor
-Television greatly altered the way we get our news and entertainment.
-Political boundries were drawn, and pretty much remain today. One could get by with a map from the 50s without too much difficulty.
-In 1959, the US got its 50th state.
-For the first time, almost every American family could own a car (I may be way wrong about this).
-For the first time, we lived in the shadow of The Bomb.
Depends, of course, on what you mean by “modern life.”
Most people are taking a technological approach. Nothing wrong with that, but I’m more interested in a philosophical one.
Probably the major break, there, then, is the Enlightenment in the 18th century. Most modern philosophies, ideologies, and institutions have been building on ways of thinking that began there.
Enlightenment thinking encouraged the political, economic, and social structures we have today. It also encouraged a scientific worldview (thanks to its emphasis on reason) that allowed science – and thus technology – to flourish.
No doubt. And of course, the events of the late 19th century were influenced by the early 19th century, which were shaped by the late 18th… we could go on and on.
But this thread was inspired by a conversation with my girlfriend after watching a movie about WWI last night. (Masterpiece Theatre – anyone else see it?) I began to think of how two things – the industrial revolution and an egotistical decision by Queen Victoria – led, directly or indirectly – to the Bush Admin’s current policy in Iraq. Strange how easy it is to connect the dots on that.
Oops, forgot to add those into my vote for the 1950s. Commercial airline travel and direct-dial long distance calling were certainly important hallmarks.
Which I deliberately left vague. 
Most people are taking a technological approach. Nothing wrong with that, but I’m more interested in a philosophical one.
Yes, and I think one can point to 7/4/1776 as a harbinger of a new social paradigm. I also think that 11/11/1917 was another – It was the downfall of the Victorians and the dawn of the Intellectuals.
Thanks, Ghanima, for saying better than I could. Hamish notes that most of our standards of measure seem to be technological. I think that that is the key difference of the modern era. We think in terms of technology. And that began to really take hold during the 1860’s. The US civil war of course magnified this chang and forced it upon our nation. And the European nations were not going to ignore any technological advances made by the Americans. The increase of technology since then has really just been an intensification of the same feelings and ideas. Jet planes are just the latest iteration of the steamship.
Like **Marley23 ** says, we may be at the begining of a new era. No way to know until later. But it could be that the whole idea of technology has changed. Information technology has undergone what may be a profound transformation. Content has become divorced from the medium. A song, image, document, or program is no longer dependent upon a tape or disc. In purchasing a song online, you no longer trade in media, just a pattern of 1’s and 0’s.
I’ll leave it at that.
I would say the late 1940’s through early 1950’s in America. The world wars were finished and you could do essentially all of the everyday things then as you could do now even if it was in a rudimentary form. It might take three days to get to Hong Kong by air but you could do it for the price of an expensive ticket. You could make long distance telephone calls around the world and electric refrigerators and television could be had for a price. Cars were common, fairly reliable and highways were paved throughout the country. Before that, I think a modern person would feel not just limited, but feel a fundamental shift in the way that life operates. My house that I am writing from was built in 1760 and I like to sit and think about the way that life that was during the revolutionary war for the builders, the civil war soldiers that lived here when the house was 100 years old, old me sitting here typing on the internet 150 years after that.
Yes, but when did/will we become ultramodern?
I think this is more of an MPSIMS but what the hell, I always enjoy a little mental masturbation.
I think it would be a hoot to bring Benjamin Franklin or Thomas Edison to the present in a time machine and show him around. I could tell them that the science of electricity is so far advanced that we have been able to build a world wide network that connects virtually every person in the developed world to every other… for the express purpose of exchanging dirty pictures. Franklin, who is said to be fond of older women, may be interested to know they now inject deadly poison into their faces in order to look younger. I’d show them all the marvels of the modern age: live organ transplants, gene therapy, Spam™, spam, diet cat food, iPods, non-standard capitalization.
Of course the first time I took one of them for a ride in ordinary urban/freeway traffic in Phoenix they’d probably go into sensory overload, have a panic attack and die from a heartstorm. How long do you figure Voltaire could last driving down the Las Vegas strip, say near the Mirage during the volcano show at night in an open top covnertable, before his head explodes? :eek: They probably could not take “modern” life.
My namesake great-grandfather lived 1862-1952. Slavery was abolished in the US before he got out of short pants. He went to the Dakota territory to seek his fortune at age 14 about the same time the Lakota wiped out Custer and his men. There was an open spot on the haying crew at Fort Lincoln as the previous crew had been wiped out by indians. He worked hard and made a name for himself in the transportation industry, as a bullwhacker running the one of the biggest oxen teams in the territory. The iron horse made that obsolete so he worked at a wide variety of occupations from sheriff to postmaster and homesteaded several successful places and finally settled in 1915. Hed saw the invention and advent of automobiles in the middle of his lifetime. He saw two world wars. When he was born, cutting edge military technoligy was metallic cartridges and repeating weapons. When he passed on everyone was wondering if we’d drop a hydrogen bomb on the Chinese.
How many times could he have said that modern life had begun? Granted they didn’t have utility electricity or a phone on his ranch until more than ten years after his death. Until then they used wind generated electricity, putting them somewhat ahead of the curve. Did modern life begin when he had to put distallate and white gas into a tractor instead of pitching hay and oats to a pair of Belgian draft horses in order to do the plowing or hay mowing? Did it begin when the army no longer needed to buy horses from him?
No need to be condescending. If you’d like me to elaborate, I will. I feel that our modern lives are greatly influenced by several things: corporations, health, transportation, communication, and civil rights, to name the biggies.
Corporations got their start in the Civil War - 1860’s.
Popular health movements began in this era - for example the famous Dr. Kellogg and his high-fiber diet. Germ theory gained popularity. The binocular microscope was developed (1860) Pasteur published quite a bit in the 1860’s. Etc.
Transportation - trains were being frequently used and the last spike was driven into the transcontinental railroad in 1869. Submarines were first developed in 1860’s as well.
Communication - In 1881 the Postal Telegraph System was founded. Telephone invented in 1876.
Civil Rights - Slavery is the no-brainer. But don’t forget the suffragettes - 1897.
I stand by my humble opinion.
Woah! Hold on, I wasn’t being condescending! Sorry if I came off that way. Too bad we can read any inflection we want into the printed word.
I was agreeing with you, in a way. I was just pointing out that the IR didn’t happen in a vacuum, as you well know. Events led up to it, and other events led up to those, and so on. Logically, one could pick an ancestor event of the IR and say that was the beginning of modern times. All IMHO, of course.
September 21st, 1957. Modern civilization began on this day in a little grass hut on a small island called Guam.
I’m a tad uncomfortable with the very precise dates. It seems to me that the Enlightenment was going on throughout the Eighteenth Century.
(Fed by the Scientific Revolution of the Seventeenth Century, the Reformation in the Sixteenth Century, the new discoveries of the Fifteenth Century, and the Renaissance that began in the Fourteenth Century, etc, etc, etc).
I think you’re certainly right that it culminated with the Democratic Revolutions at the end of the century, but I’d see even that in three stages:[ul]
[li]The failed revolution of Corsica[/li][li]The successful American revolution[/li][li]The successful revolution in France[/ul][/li]
Of these three, the French Revolution was the most radical. The aristocracy was an established part of daily life, as opposed to a distant controlling force on the other side of an ocean. And with church support, a rebellion against the aristocracy was also a rebellion against organized Christianity.
When the French Revolution ousted its aristocrats (and in spite of bringing them back a couple of times), the other princes of Europe knew they had to make concessions, or risk losing their heads.
I date “Modern Times” as beginning around 1919 (the end of Europe as the premier world power.) The end of WWI meant the following:
-no more royalty influencing world events
-the transition from the Atlantic Basin to the Pacific Rim (as the locus of world affairs)
-the era of Mass Media began
-the end of Old Europe
The real question is: what’s next? We are witnessing the following:
-the end of centralized religions
-total sexual equality
-the end of ideologies
-the begiinings of a unified world economy, based upon information
HO-HO-HO!
Ideologies are alive & well, & trashing our American Government.
Total Sexual Equality isn’t even on the table for 3/4 of the world.
New religions are, admittedly, replacing many of the old, but the centralized ones show few signs of vanishing.
Call it a bit of hyperbole, I guess. Important dates central to (but not precisely centered upon) critical eras.
I’ll agree with the mid to late 1800s for one very personal, practical reason. Toilet paper and the beginning of a modern sewage system in London were both mid to late 1800s developments. Sorry, I just can’t think modern thoughts in an outhouse. Indoor plumbing - that’s modern.