I was talking to my friend the other day about this and he isn't sure if we are in one or not. I am pretty sure that right now we are in a Renaissance.

What do all of you think? Is this a period we will look back on as a surge of progress in multiple fields or a stagnant piece of the history book?

EDIT:
I changed the spelling from the crazy versions of what the collaborative effort of myself and Microsoft Word were trying to spell. Resonance? :bugeye: Thanks all for telling me.

The other day I was holding the new fanta bottle and I thought "the future really is now".
I mean in 1991 people marvelled over what the year 2000 would be like, in 98 people were skeptical thinking it would be the same just like 98 was to 97. Then the clock struck 12:00 on the last day of 99 and people checked the sky's for flying cars just in case. There was none and every scoffed saying they knew it since 98. But in the next 3 years a wierd thing has happened, we really have had a shot in the ass and got our act together. Wierd new stuff is coming out everyday and and we're suddenly moving so fast. Some people deny it because of how smug they were on 99/00 new years but its becoming hard to ignore.
This is the new rennaisance and it will be remembered for as long as there is man.
The next one will come when robots are doing our work and philosophy returns.
We'll be pretty good at philosophy by then too and our compassion levels will only keep increasing parrallel to our comfort levels like it has in the past.
We just might make earth a utopia for all before we destroy it:)

LOL too much sciforums for you!

resonance.... renaiscance (sp?) same difference :)

Hmmm I'd say not too much "rebirth" happeneing now. Certainly our knowledge is advancing at an incredible rate. When I look at our scientific progress of the last ten years I'm just blown away. But, I dont really think that we are altering in some fundamental way our role as intellectual beings. Entirely debatable though...

Definately. Tech is the main reason. It's fundamentally changing our lives, and it's just gonna do so more and more. Rebirth? Definately... though I think right now is right before the death of the old.

One of the hallmarks of the Renaissance was the jump from 2-d painting to 3-d painting. So, following the same pattern, you'd expect there to be another jump from 3 to 4-d. That happened a little under a hundred years ago with the invention of film. So we've been in a Renaissance for quite awhile. I bet it'll peter out after the "forseeable future," which I define as how far science can concievably go from our current viewpoint. That's quite a ways off.

I had a look at an article in the New York Times Book Review, and a scientist or psychologist or psychohistorian (you pick) said that it is not entirely inconcievable for the time we are living in right now to be the time that will determine the fate of the universe. Will we survive ourselves? Will we survive nature, to conquer it and every last atom of the universe?

Only time, and conservative politics, will tell.

btw (just so I don't sound too much like an asshole), nice thread idea, man. We need more stuff like this.

*softly blows across the top of a glass bottle, listens,
Yep, we're in a Resonance, right now.

dunno. cant really tell. the last renasance (can any1 spell that?) was huge paradigm shifting from church controlled world where all knowledge was evil and all art was to be praise to god to a world of free thought and expression and flow of ideas. huge leap. art developed to 3d because every1 was aloud to make art then. and artists were no longer being arrested for using paint...
lol.
do i think were in a renasonce? cant really tell. i think weve been shifting slowly but steadily over the past couple hundred years. it more of a renasonce of information and technologies. a hundred yrs ago people were devoloping vastly new mathamatics and machines. then there was a hop where we put it all to practicul use. then there was a jump when we started speeding on our way thru the sciences. we may be in a renasonce. its just a slow one. i mean.. think about it. we were in a the dark ages for a couple thousand years. befor ethat was a leap from the stone ages. that took a while. those could be called renasonces. there not all quick. if we are in a renasonce its one of science and technoladgy. no soo much as culture.
ok... geting redundant. sry...

Jesus.....
Renaissance. It is not a resonance or a renasance.

In fact, Resonance means something entirely different!
-- Intensification and prolongation of sound, especially of a musical tone, produced by sympathetic vibration --
(though, in Physics it's different, I believe)

Originally posted by Tyler
Jesus.....
Renaissance. It is not a resonance or a renasance.

In fact, Resonance means something entirely different!
-- Intensification and prolongation of sound, especially of a musical tone, produced by sympathetic vibration --
(though, in Physics it's different, I believe)
Yeah I know, I already corrected the post, but I don't know how to change the title of the poll. Word changed it for me and I didn't pay attention when I first posted it.

Unfortunately I dont know enough history to be able to make a proper comparison. but you have to remember that history doesnt repeat itself, although perhaps human stupidities do.

Bearing in mind that Rennaissance means re-birth, and was a term coined in the 19th century to describe the period, i would be tempted to say that the real rennaissance was the 19th early 20th centurys. Think about the development of industrialisation, capitalism, atheism, lots and lots of isms different from what went before. But now we have sort of gotten mired down in a sea of nothingness, although that is not to say that history is ended, just that it seems liek weve exhausted all our options. And dont go on about computers, bring them in and its quite clear we arent actually in anything comparable to what has gone before. Technology wise we are sort of in a rennaissance, but then you have to ask what exactly technology does to the human condition. I would say that it intensifies it in the sense that it enables us to do things faster and often better than before on the surface, and it changes ourselves qualitatively, as well as quantitatively. But it still eaves teh questions unaswered, such as what is the answer to the ultimate question?
(yeah, its 42.)


"I had a look at an article in the New York Times Book Review, and a scientist or psychologist or psychohistorian (you pick) said that it is not entirely inconcievable for the time we are living in right now to be the time that will determine the fate of the universe. Will we survive ourselves? Will we survive nature, to conquer it and every last atom of the universe?"

ERmmm, except that you could say that about every period in teh past, such as teh last great meteorite strike, or the Roman Emprie etc. Imagine if it hadnt fallen. Or what about WW2? If you take the long view, its all connected such that the above statement is absurd.

Originally posted by guthrie
ERmmm, except that you could say that about every period in teh past, such as teh last great meteorite strike, or the Roman Emprie etc. Imagine if it hadnt fallen. Or what about WW2? If you take the long view, its all connected such that the above statement is absurd.
That's sort of right in my opinion. I don't think you could say that about any time before the last 50 years or so. We truly have our own fate in out hands. I think we have made it past a tough period where nuclear weapons were on the rise and it seemed inevitable that disaster would strike. But I think now were are past that. We can move on to a bright future full of Corporate Billboards on the moon and brand name water. :D

We're effectively continuing the Renaissance which started a couple of centuries ago.

Why would the next renaissance have philoshophy?

With the new Duke and Barons being the CEO's. Just look at the downfall of the Mom & Pop stores, they're all being gobbled up by multi-nationals. Look at the legislation, it's not about discussion and arguments, it's about lobbying power.

Perhaps in 50 years another Renaissance may happen, but for the moment I can only see the world slipping further down the road towards medieval practices .

All governments and civilizations have been feudalistic. Some more than others. However this is the way that it's always, always been, and likely always will be. The rich will be the powerful.

So, what was the situation with regards to rich people in the renaissance? And how can we get rid of them?

It is hard to see where you are in the present viewpoint. Thing is that many new technologies and discoveries are in search of an application. More so now with events in discoveries progressing as fast as it does.

A good example of this was the discovery that beamed raditation could cause an increase in heat of an object. (This in reference to the development of radar and the well known example of the candy bar in the pocket)

Once new ideas are learned they mostly sit on the shelf till someone comes up with an application for them. No one can say at the time that it will be the cusp of a radical change in how we live.

Computers are suspected to be one of these developments but it is still out to lunch on whether the future will consider this a development on par with the discovery and later use of electricity.

Once a discovery finds a use it then needs to mature into a developed and understood technology.

Going back to the radar, the discovery of heating an object lead to the development of the microwave or radar range. Other offshoots were things like microwave transmission for telephones and data squirts and the possibility of power transmission by microwave. This only shows that once a technology starts maturing that other uses are found for it.

Prediciting the future is haphazard at best. Look at some of the old scifi written in the 50's and what was predicited then based on best guess data of the time. It is no where in the ball park. Events progess slowly in the real world. No one can guess when a fundamental discovery will be blundered into. One with the far reaching affects of something like electricity doesn't come around often but when it does, it is a world shaker.

It takes hindsight to see just how important that discovery was to the world when all is said and done.

Yikes I thought we were in hyper-modernity. . ..

Are we in a new Renaissance? Renaissance is a french word meaning "Rebirth" of course, but civilization is not being reborn. It's just growing. Let's say it was born with the Sumerians, grew from there to Egyptians, Greeks, and then the Romans. Civilization died with the Romans, and it was reborn in the Renaissance. I can't think of anything that would represent a collapse in civilization in the last five hundred years, and period of darkness that we grew out of. So I'd have to say, no, this is not a new renaissance.
And yeah, i know I didn't address Asian culture, but I was unfortunately never taught anything about Asian history in school, so, it's not my fault.
Actually, the reason we had all those new thinkers and artists is because there were more rich people who wanted to be surrounded by beautiful things and read beautiful poems.

Gurglo

P.S. I know all this cause we're doin' the Renaissance in Socials

I aggree with gurglingmonkey. We arne't in a "rebirth" of sorts.