The New Age

tim berners-lee invented the world wide web in 1989, and it opened in 1991, either of those might be good,

i'd plump for the second because i was born in 1991 and could pretend that my birth heralded the dawn of a new age

 

No, it's not time yet. Lets start the new era when the number of nuclear weapons has been reduced to zero or maybe when we've ended world hunger.

 

I think 2000 would be a good number to round it up to. Even if we started at 1991, eventually they would probably change it to that and just say

BC was a 3000 year period
AD was a 2000 year period
AT will probably be 1000 years or less, because I'm sure we will discover light speed, interstellar unions and communicate with animals on our own planet, and these will all mark new ages I am assuming.

 

Well, we could usher in the new age by supporting GMOs, and curing world hunger.

The Age of Prosperity, AP

 

well, i suppose that might be right, i'd just like to have a specific date which wasnt just convenient but could pinpoint an exact moment that the world shifted. i'd also like to see a lot more love for the invention of the printing press in how we view history, but that's by the by.

 

MORE love for the printing press??!??!?!?

Christianity is basically a printing press cult.

 

ironic, really, considering its most famous early uses

 

But the Bible was the first mass production, if I remember correctly.

 

the first, yes, but the most important thing about the printing press (besides from a general increase in literacy amongst the poor) was that it meant that if you wanted to get something read by people you no longer had to dictate it to a monk, it lead to a proliferation of radical political ideology, the ideals of the Renaissance and the enlightenment and of revolution. anti-monarchy, anti-church, anti theistic rhetoric spreading unchecked throughout Europe, no longer under control of church and state.
this was essentially the democratisation of knowledge, where the catholic church in europe had maintained control through being the keepers of knowledge, they conducted masses in latin, the bible was only ever read in latin- it wasn't for you, sonny jim, and if you wanted your child to be educated, you would send them to the church. with the printing press and the demand for knowledge, printed versions of canonical law and the bible became available to the general public. discrepencies were found- the catholic church had played fast and loose with certain parts of canonical law to fit in with their dogma. They no longer had sole control and censorship rights over what was written in the bible and in their own canonical laws. ultimately, the printing press was used by martin luther and the reformists and broke the hold that the catholic church had over europe by popular action, which could now be properly organised. the church broke and divided, people had tried before, but without the press, it was impossible.

also, because of the ability for scientists to use the press to communicate with each other between countries, it brought about an era of scientific co-operation: the scientific revolution, printing presses began printing more and more secular material, whereas before, books were much more often religious in nature, the church was becoming less significant to the modern world and the direction it was taking, new secular centres of learning were springing up, which meant that the church no longer had control over the education of the young.

if we live now in a more secular age (and we do), it is thanks to the printing press.

 

I never thought about that, I always saw it as something that mainly helped Christianity, but it totally did hurt and help the church all at once, and allowed for the diversity we have today.

 

well, its kinda tricky, you could argue that although it massively decreased the political power of the catholic church in europe, it helped christianity itself to grow and develop and to have to reform and get rid of some of its corrupt practices by shining a spotlight onto the people who supposedly where entrusted with its protection, but had been massively abusing their power.

basically, once the bible was in english, not latin, it was everybody's not just the church. The church put so much effort into supressing the works of john wycliffe and Hus because they knew that having the bible in english would massively limit their power. the catholic church had always been about non-literate communication, pictures and music and incense, their techniques were an assault on the senses of the illiterate, bypassing the cerebral, not on the mind. the latin version of the bible that the church used (and killed people for not using) had become so corrupted that on comparing the greek to the latin version that thomas linacre said of it:“Either this (the original Greek) is not the Gospel… or we are not Christians.” only the printing press exposed these irregularities, taking power from the church and putting it into the hands of the reader, the slow erosion of the church's power was inevitable from the moment that first latin bible was printed. once its on your bookshelf, its yours not theirs.

 

So I was thinking.

AD is considered "The Year of our Lord", and they believed they were establishing Jesus' kingdom on Earth... No one believes that anymore, instead they are waiting for Jesus to come establish it himself, and it is supposed to be 1,000 years of his reign.

So we should go along with that theme, and maybe go with something more like:

BC: (Considered "Before Christ" by most modern people, even though it is Latin)
AD: Called "The Year of out Lord" (Considered to be "After Death" by most modern people, even though it is Latin)
GJ: We can call it the year of the Galactic Journey, and Christians can call it "Year of the Galactic Jesus".

 

Small correction: AD has never meant "after death", because after all, Jesus was born at approximately zero and died at about age 33. AD means "Anno Domini", the Year of our Lord, like you said.

 

No need for the correction, this is the reason I included the phrase "as believed by most modern people".

 

No, we took it from you!

Check the scoreboard mo'fo'! :beatnik:

 

We're out there, my friend, though perhaps rarer than diamonds.
Luther, to his great surprise, being handed back his own 95 Theses translated into German, could be historically regarded as a monolithic node in bifurcation on our cultural phylogenetic tree; grist to the mill in the expulsion of ephemera. I wonder at this thread however, does anybody else here intuit the ancient apprehension of time as cyclical, as opposed to our linear, our 'crux' framework?

 

Lol

 

Actually, us Dutch traded parts of the US for land in South America. Smart move, would do again.

 

Well it wasn't the US at that time was it...:scholar: