What is our “Age”?

What is going to power mankind into the next phase of history? I’m not going to limit this thought on different forms of electricity generation, though it certainly does play a vital role in the development of society. Following along the same lines what Age are we in? For much of history the “Age” has been described as the prevalent or new vital technology used in that era or the most powerful country during that time. Will the age we live in now be described as the “American Age” or the “Digital Age”? We cannot conclusively classify what Age we will be called by those who live in the future, but I have a feeling that “Information Age” is something that might be accurate. Information is readily accessible to billions of people, and ideas and information can be exchanged at near the speed of light.

Long distance relationships that once required tremendous amounts of man-hours to sustain, be it the Pony Express or a galleon sailing for months on end, can now be easily maintained via online communication be it Skype or email. The advent of telegraph enabled quick long-distance communication yet still required human intermediaries to decipher the Morse code. What would have cost a trip to a renowned symphony hall to hear the greatest hits of the day can now be viewed for free (provided internet access) on YouTube a day after if not the night after a performance is made. Hundreds of millions of songs are available online, and the iTunes store has over six million[1].

YouTube has around 1 billion videos, and Google has indexed trillions of pages (they have indexed over 2,000 pages on my site alone, and over 200 pages in my website appear in Google search). With so much information at our fingertips and important thing to remember is to find appropriate sources and reference them as to not spread false information. That being said, there are definitely things even on this website that will turn out to be false.

In other parts of the world, the “Age” that we live in may be classified according to their leaders – this was done in dynastic China as well as in Imperial Rome. Perhaps some Americans will call the past few years the “Bush” age and these current the “Obama” age, and some will classify the Age based on the ruling party or system of government. These are all very myopic as they fail to encompass what the world as a whole is developing or regressing into. There are definitely periods of history when societies regressed at least technologically, such as post-Roman Europe and the Viking years. Some countries have lost their manufacturing edge based on the overbearing value of their currency, such as Britain (the loss of India, Singapore, the United States, Africa, etc. for raw resources didn’t help) – Japan is currently undergoing a surge in the value of the Yen thanks to the shaky value of the dollar and the Feds recent purchase of large amounts of Treasury bills. Who would have thought that the Congress approved banking authority (most feared by Thomas Jefferson yet supported by Hamilton [why do you think Jefferson's portrait is placed on the least used $2 bill while Hamilton's is on the $10? : The answer is ironic, the inflation caused by the private banks control of the interest rates has much to do with the $2 becoming obsolete]) would be able to LEND money to the US Government with INTEREST!

Since I have obviously gone off-topic, I will end here.

[1]http://www.apple.com/itunes/whats-on/