"So, Is There An Official Name For Our Times?" Topic

A century from now, where will 2014 fit in the eras of mankind?

I propose that we are deep into the Peekaboo Era, when all our enemies were no longer nations, but were hidden organizations that infect every nation on Earth and are lead by wannabe supervillains like those in Bond films.

And just like today's innumerable cable stations make up the worst news stories to stand out from the rest, the evil supervillains are so many that they compete to see who can get the most tv air time and social media attention.

Thoughts? If not The Peekaboo Era, then what? And why?

Dan

The Bieber-Kardashian Era, or "The Suicide of Western Civilization".

Didn't you guys get the memo? History ended twenty-three years ago, when the Soviet Union collapsed.

So we have gone into The Post-Historical Era already?

Do we still need to keep track of time?

Dan

This will be "Early Whack-a-Mole." Later Whack-a-Mole will have insurgents in turnbacks and special forces in busbys.

Followed by the Pico de Gallo Period?

Dan

It's the 'Culture Clash' period. Preceded by the 'WTeff' period and soon to be followed by the 'Who invited them' period.

The Myopic Discovery Channel, the BibbityBC and the Hysterical Channel will each put the era in its proper perspective.

"the social age"

I would vote for "Doh!" because "oops!" has too many letters.

I suspect we are still in the era of Nationalism, which started in 1789.

The long twentyfirst century?

still not post scarcity age.

The Facebook era or the Twitter age, of course.

The Digital Age

"The End Days"

The "TV and Music Stinks Age"

The dumb age.

Heinlein already named it The Crazy Years.

I think it works quite well.

The Age of Self Delusion.

The Whimper Years.

The Internet Age or The Internet revolution

Age of the Goofs?

The pre-apocalyptic era. Maybe just barely :)

The Age of Divas.

The Rise of Virtual Reality. What is developing underneath all of this angst over "bad guys" rampaging is, the steady takeover of virtual reality. Retreat into it by the main mass of 'puterized populace will essentially end all real warfare. It will subside with a whimper, as everyone withdraws from the empirical world into the metaphysical worlds of their own imaginations, powered/controlled by the WWDB (world-wide database), where its denizens have no presence, let along impact, on the physical world. A few fundamentalists will remain unconnected to the WWDB, preferring the physical (real) world, but there will be so much space available, and so little actually happening, that peace will break out for lack of participants….

"The Age of Selfie-Destruction"

I think Winston Smith was closest. I think that The Age of the Decline of the West sums it up nicely…unfortunately…

June Jacobs named it years ago.She predicted "The Dark Age Ahead".

"The age of old people being wrong about the youth yet again" has a nice ring to it :)

I think that The Age of the Decline of the West sums it up nicely…

or, the Untergangdesabendlandeszeit, for short.

Ron

It is, "The Age of Management", where what is done does not matter as long as the situation is managed well. We are all being managed more and more and those who refuse to be managed are ridiculed, marginalized, criminalized and (if very determined) neutralized by the managers. Governments, NGO's, advertising and public relations, religions, employers, lobbyists, interest groups, organizations, friends of the court, and so many more are all trying to force us into behaviours which we might not otherwise consider doing. They do this while all the while managing to keep most of us asleep and compliant through, debt, taxation, competition, distractions and entertainment. We are slipping into post-industrial serfdom, managed by the "White-collared Boyars of Spin".
Rod Robertson

Yep, everyone is right. We are doomed.

The Readjustment Era.

A time/Century when National boundaries set during the Imperial era were readjusted along Nationalist, racial and ethnic lines.

Wargaming this era has lots of potential scenarios. Obvious current ones involve the generic Moslem/Arab world and may include the wars leading to the formation of the Kurdish state in 2020 and final recognition of the Islamic State a few years later (once the inital religious fervour had receded and it had become more 'secular'.)

Actually, wargames already have some of these currently 'imaginary' nations – Dystopian Wars has, for example, the Islamic Federation. Fine, that's the current 'Islamic State' after a period of empire building in the Islamic world.

The Age of Anarchy.

We are still in the Industrial era. Vast parts of the human population are only incompletely exposed to the Industrial Revolution, even in those parts of the world that have been exposed to it fully and for longer. I would say that considering it took 200-300 years for the UK to become a nation whose dominant culture is industrial civilization (1600-1900), which includes so called post-industrial stuff, it will be another 200-500 years before we can talk about a new era of human civilization. Do not mistake the violent reaction of the discontents of industrialization for a serious challenge. The Middle East has only being exposed to the Industrial Revolutions full might in the last 100-50 years, it will take another 100-200 years for the transformation to be complete.

Thus we are still in the industrial era. What will follow? No one knows. But the issues at heart are no different from those 100-200 years ago, a struggle for stability as pre-industrial cultures and mores are eradicated by industrial civilization and people try to make sense of a new world, many clinging to an "idealized" past. Give it time. It takes centuries for pre-industrial civilizations to be transformed. Hell there are pockets of pre-industrial mores in Europe and the US and those have been exposed for a couple of centuries or more.

These pretty much sum up the current social media-driven era:

#p0sers

#phonies

It encompasses the (bleak) ends of the spectrum…. ;-)

I rather like the "Delusional Era".

The "Age of Rampant/Non-Existent Hyper-Inflation" is also a good one.

The "Alice in Wonderland Period" would also be very appropriate, for where everything wrong is right, and vice versa.

The "Politically Correct Period", as well, to rival the religious wars from several centuries ago.

I propose bringing back an oldie, but a goodie "The Reign of Terror".

"The era of mass hysteria" ending in 2012.

"Rise of the Planet of the Apes".

(History is written by the victors.)

"The brief glimpse of Earth history where humans happened to inhabit it" :)

Liar, Liar, World on Fire!

"The time would be easy to know, for then mankind would have become as the Great Old Ones; free and wild and beyond good and evil, with laws and morals thrown aside and all men shouting and killing and revelling [sic] in joy. Then the liberated Old Ones would teach them new ways to shout and kill and revel and enjoy themselves, and all the earth would flame with a holocaust of ecstasy and freedom."
H.P. Lovecraft, The Call of Cthulhu

The Age of Madness

I can't believe I'm about to quote Dennis Miller, but this is what he said about all the social media:

"Never have lives less lived been more chronicled".

Dan

The 'mis-information age' ?

@ Mako : 'The Delusional Era' has my vote .

'The pre-apocalyptic era' is likely how it will be remembered.

!…LOL at the Dennis Miller quote. too true !

The Cluster ing goat rope Era …

We are in the Post Apocalypse, right? After all, the Doomsday year 2012 has come and gone already.

Dan :)

Age of cell phone addicts.

"the USB age"

"What were they thinking" is my suggestion.