incunabula

This is a word that means “printed books in Europe before printed books were even remotely common“, dated, for our convenience, to 1501 — 60 years, or two generations, after the invention of the printing press.

As an elder millennial, as I keep reading discussions of the state of the “Internet”, I am more and more certain that we will date the internetcunabula age to 1990 to … well, probably right about now. Maybe it will be 2020, when video-calling became 100% the norm? Maybe it will be 2030, when “AI” (LLM-mediated speech or text conversation) will very possibly become the default interaction mode between most people and most computers. Or maybe something else; the Internet is filled with possibilities, still, despite the crushing weight of money and corporations and government and social media.

It’s also worth noting what else happened after 1500: the Reformation, the Renaissance, eventually the Enlightenment … but that took, oh, five more generations or so, if not ten. The question of “how much faster will the internet make things go” remains a very important one — is there a “Second Reformation” coming? And if so, what is it? And, when … ?