Election 2018

[David Horn]

(11-03-2018, 10:43 AM)Bill the Piper Wrote:

(10-29-2018, 12:38 PM)David Horn Wrote: The Information Age is a bit of a misnomer.  It's less about information, per se, and more about easy access to it, but that's a quibble.  The advent of computers is the technological precursor, but the cultural impacts were due to the rise of the PC, the internet and digital cellphones.  Has our thinking changed all that much due to Facebook and Twitter?  I don't think so.  So a marker for that transition is somewhere in the 1990-2005 range.  A follow-on Age will emerge soon, but what it will encompass and what it will be called is still TBD.

Remember than even in the early 2000s, a common pop culture trope was "computers are for nerds". Prince of Persia games were cool, but it was social media that started the Information Age. Another thread attributes the success of Trump to an online board called 4chan. What would be the equivalent in 2002? People sending text messages on their Nokia 3310s?

Two points:

• On the old board, we had a very poster (Rose) who railed against 4chan pre-Katrina
• The pre-social media technologies were clunky but still effective. Internet forums superseded Usenet, and listservs existed through the entire time.

Bill Wrote:The next Age? Assuming the current 4T ends well, I see two possibilities:
-Transhuman Age - if the next technological revolution is the use of biotech to ennoble (or pervert) human nature
-Interplanetary Age - if the next revolution is the creation of settlements in outer space

The transition could coincide with next 4T, around the 2090s.

I agree that both are in the future, just not the immediate future. Some low-level transhumanist implantation is not far off, but true transhumanism? I don't think so. We aren't ready for that grand leap. Space relocation is even further away: we still don't have a clue about shielding -- a must for the relocators to arrive alive. I assume some interstitial age we haven't seen coming will get us into the 22nd century. After that, who knows?