RE: What is the next age? (i.e., industrial age)
March 27, 2019 at 5:16 pm
(This post was last modified: March 27, 2019 at 5:28 pm by The Grand Nudger.)
Exponential growth in a certain sector of technology isn't new or even indicative of an age. There was exponential growth in ag tech, in the stone age. Exponential growth in -many- areas of tech..in the bronze age, and many more yet in what may still be our current age, the iron age. Think of it this way. If you took something away from everyone, what thing could you take away that would cause global society to collapse. Not get shittier or less convenient. Collapse. Truly cause the downward spiral you mentioned. In the stone age it was rocks. In the bronze..copper and tin. Now...is it microchips, the internet.... or steel?
This isn't to say that the many mini breakthroughs in each and every age aren't important or useful, just as an interesting tidbit of academia with respect to how we classify "ages" and opposed to how we popularize this decade (or century's) newest and coolest shit and how that leads us to declare so and so the age of (insert here). We keep coming up with these mini ages at an increasing rate...and I think that occludes the reality of the very slow change and rate of progress we actually experience.
Hell, we blinked and missed the space age, apparently.
Arguably, we began down the road of some information age (which may be the next age or even an age we're just now entering, granted) the very moment that Uncle Og held out his hand and counted gazelle on his fingers...but before we could declare it an age in the sense that those others are ages...this tech will have to be as instrumental and irreplaceable as stones, bronze, and iron in their respective ages. It almost seems as if we got frustrated after classifying those big three and decided to pencil things in to refer to ourselves in the present as living through some great change like those of the past. The industrial age, the modern age, etc etc etc. Except here we are, still entirely dependent on iron as a civilization.
This isn't to say that the many mini breakthroughs in each and every age aren't important or useful, just as an interesting tidbit of academia with respect to how we classify "ages" and opposed to how we popularize this decade (or century's) newest and coolest shit and how that leads us to declare so and so the age of (insert here). We keep coming up with these mini ages at an increasing rate...and I think that occludes the reality of the very slow change and rate of progress we actually experience.
Hell, we blinked and missed the space age, apparently.
Arguably, we began down the road of some information age (which may be the next age or even an age we're just now entering, granted) the very moment that Uncle Og held out his hand and counted gazelle on his fingers...but before we could declare it an age in the sense that those others are ages...this tech will have to be as instrumental and irreplaceable as stones, bronze, and iron in their respective ages. It almost seems as if we got frustrated after classifying those big three and decided to pencil things in to refer to ourselves in the present as living through some great change like those of the past. The industrial age, the modern age, etc etc etc. Except here we are, still entirely dependent on iron as a civilization.
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