Maybe the title of this thread should be "The Next Age." I agree with the Grey Badger, the next age-when it finally gels-will likely be unique. There are diverse hints of impending strangeness.

Book-copyright 2012. Future Perfect The Case For Progress In A Networked Age by Steven Johnson. I have been puzzled concerning the effects of the recent Information Revolution. Could some of these effects be a recapitulation of the past? The author is interested in "peer networks." The concluding chapter is labeled The Peer Society: "Many of the most promising peer networks today utilize advanced technology, but from a certain angle, they can be seen as a return to a much older tradition. The social architectures of the paleolithic era-the human mind's formative years-were much closer to peer networks than they were to states or corporations. As E. O. Wilson writes in The Social Conquest of Earth, Hunter-gatherer bands and small agricultural villages are by and large egalitarian. Leadership status is granted individuals on the basis of intelligence and bravery...."

Johnson is interested in something called liquid democracy.

LiquidFeedback software.

Scroll down-to Grey Badger's comments regarding post-modernism.

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Those people who discount the movements of the 1960s or "boomer ideas" and such, should pay special attention to the cautionary tale presented on PBS tonight about the Mayans. "Civilizations can fail," they said. In the Mayan case, it was two factors that did them in in the 9th century: war, and environmental catastrophe. So what are the two chief political movements that came out of the 60s, and are its legacy? The peace movement and the environmental movement. The 60s movements, you could conclude, must succeed in order for our civilization to survive!

The Singularity

Scroll down. Comparison between Hellenistic period and modern culture. One common feature is a post-modern disillusionment with all institutions and political processes. And the perception that a brilliant era is past. One difference is notable in terms of Sorokin's cycle-the Greeks were going from the Ideal to the Real, while we have already gone through the secular thing (which seems to be in a cynical phase).

We are fortunate that the 20th was the century of pop culture; consider cultural exhaustion as the alternative, as a brilliant period had run its course.

Originally Posted by The Grey Badger

Not really oddly. The sense that we're in the end of an age actually predates TV by several decades, and hasn't ceased. An era ended around WWI, and we've spent over a century trying to create the coming era, with a detour that looked solid and sound (the American Century) but is bidding fair not to last. Popular mass media sense these things and package them for consumption. Just as they do our fears of the parasitic elites (vampires), mindless hungry masses (zombies) and young men in gangs (werewolves).

So our Post-Classic chronology already includes two different periods. First, the American Century, now fading. Second, the Post-Modern present, which bears similarities to the Hellenistic Age.

Okay, so what comes after Post-Modernism? Could we have a multi-part Interregnum?

Originally Posted by TimWalker

Okay, so what comes after Post-Modernism? Could we have a multi-part Interregnum?

We did last time. It was called The Dark Ages, The High Middle Ages, and The Late Middle Ages.

I have imagined the next distinct, well defined Age being defined by high tech. By some major technological revolution. Or else things go very wrong, and we end up with a post-toasty scenario. (I have long read science fiction, as well as speculations by scientists). The catch is that some scenarios would have no historical precedents, and therefore be very speculative.

Originally Posted by TimWalker

I have imagined the next distinct, well defined Age being defined by high tech. By some major technological revolution. Or else things go very wrong, and we end up with a post-toasty scenario. (I have long read science fiction, as well as speculations by scientists). The catch is that some scenarios would have no historical precedents, and therefore be very speculative.

I think we've already had the high tech revolution. That is today's age, not a new age.

By high tech I was thinking of massive space industrialization, or nanotechnology, or a Singularity, or programmable matter, anti-matter, Transhumanism, etc. The recent Information Revolution is comparatively low tech, and a minor thing.

The first century or so of the Hellenistic Age was considered a fairly vigorous period for the Greeks. Hopefully the 21st century will experience the same.

Originally Posted by TimWalker

The first century or so of the Hellenistic Age was considered a fairly vigorous period for the Greeks. Hopefully the 21st century will experience the same.

I consider the Hellenistic Age to have been a mega-3T for Greece, just from the flavor of the period and a look at the art from the beginning to the end of it.

And there may be another 3T parallel-early 3T is less unraveled than late 3T.

Originally Posted by The Grey Badger

I consider the Hellenistic Age to have been a mega-3T for Greece, just from the flavor of the period and a look at the art from the beginning to the end of it.

In the cycle of civilization as I see it, a "3T" equivalent (or at least the third part of that 493-year cycle, if divided into 4 parts) would have begun at the death of Alexander the Great, which was the beginning of the Hellenistic Age. A new such civilization cycle would have begun in the era of the late Roman Republic and the transition to Empire in the first century BC. But this new cycle was akin to our own times (which began circa 1892), and was still "Hellenistic" in the larger sense all the way through to its end at the Fall of Rome.

Originally Posted by Eric the Green

In the cycle of civilization as I see it, a "3T" equivalent (or at least the third part of that 493-year cycle, if divided into 4 parts) would have begun at the death of Alexander the Great, which was the beginning of the Hellenistic Age. A new such civilization cycle would have begun in the era of the late Roman Republic and the transition to Empire in the first century BC. But this new cycle was akin to our own times (which began circa 1892), and was still "Hellenistic" in the larger sense all the way through to its end at the Fall of Rome.

In the sense that when a smaller river flows into a larger one, the larger one is still the smaller one? "Hellenistic" is a subset of "Classical" or "Graeco-Roman" civilization, a phase of its existence, which includes several phases. Starting with the Golden Age of Athens, moving through the Hellenistic period, which was Alexander through the conquest of Greece by Rome, through Republican Era Rome (and that mega-4T, the Dying Republic Saeculum) and Imperial Rome up until the 3rd century crisis.

After that, you're in what is called Late Antiquity, which bears a lot less resemblance to its Classical predecessor than to it successor, Byzantium. BTW - for a quick visual on the subject, check out any art history text, if any still remain in this digital age.

Hopefully this mega-3T won't be culturally barren. I hope that there will be at least a modest amount of creativity, at least during the next 2T.

Originally Posted by TimWalker

Hopefully this mega-3T won't be culturally barren. I hope that there will be at least a modest amount of creativity, at least during the next 2T.

We aren't in a mega-3T.

Originally Posted by The Grey Badger

In the sense that when a smaller river flows into a larger one, the larger one is still the smaller one?

Some historians call the entire period from the Death of Alexander to the Fall of Rome "Hellenistic," since Rome was influenced by Greece a lot; but when properly applied only to Greece, then it extended only to the conquest by Rome.

"Hellenistic" is a subset of "Classical" or "Graeco-Roman" civilization, a phase of its existence, which includes several phases. Starting with the Golden Age of Athens, moving through the Hellenistic period, which was Alexander through the conquest of Greece by Rome, through Republican Era Rome (and that mega-4T, the Dying Republic Saeculum) and Imperial Rome up until the 3rd century crisis.

After that, you're in what is called Late Antiquity, which bears a lot less resemblance to its Classical predecessor than to it successor, Byzantium. BTW - for a quick visual on the subject, check out any art history text, if any still remain in this digital age.

Yes that's right. I still think of late Antiquity as Antiquity, not Byzantium, and the arts support that idea, but certainly it was a period which was leading into the next one. Such can be said also of the conquest of Greece by Rome and the Gracchian Revolution period, in the late Roman Republic. The first "modern times" from the Revolution to the pre-world war era is also such a period, in my estimation.

Originally Posted by Eric the Green

We aren't in a mega-3T.

I know. It has to be a mega-Awakening, because otherwise the window of opportunity for the Age of Aquarius has come and gone until the middle of the century, and that would not only be painful to contemplate, but - what? I know you are very deeply emotionally invested in that idea. Is it on religious grounds?
Wishful thinking? Predicted by astrology?

Many of us others were just as deeply invested in the shiny high-tech Star Trek future, with spaceliners zipping between colonies, household energy too cheap to meter, and robots doing all the work. And have dealt with the massive disappointment of our dreams not coming true,for all our efforts to make it so. And, sadder but wiser, have set to trying to deal (some of us in old age!) with the future we're getting. So while I respect your assertion, I'm afraid you're in for more sadness, which one hopes does not spill over into bitterness.

Your friend,

The Grey Badger.