Every hundred years the world changes and has a driving technology or innovation which it's known for. 81-80 is the time period that is the span. The thing it's known for tends to start in around fifty years being created. Lots of people call the age we're in that started in 1981-2080 the "information age". It's actually the "Electronics Age" since electronics is what's driving the world. Without the gizmos and other things like computer chips there wouldn't be the internet to share data.

In the Renaissance they went back and re-introduced old tech/ideas modernizing it for their time. After that in the Industrial Age they made factories and other such shops more productive. Having people in the same area and better tooling increased efficiency greatly which allowed for the tech advance we call Mass Production. In the Machine Age transportation and other things became faster along with other movement. A few may claim the best thing to come from the Electronics Age is video games.

Right now Gene Tech and Artificial Intelligence are the big two that pop up. These just seem like red herrings when it comes to the future. These two things have been running throughout history from probably someone got the idea they could be a demigod. Breeding people like livestock/cross pollination/splicing or making automatons has been in recorded history forever. It's all just being done with new tech.

So what do you think is the next Age? I haven't noticed anything major popping up yet. Or maybe the speculations of we're going into another Dark Age again is true.

I'm not sure if you are wanting to discuss the next tech, the next age or the next trend?
Not all tech becomes a trend and not all ages are based on tech.

What denotes the difference or turning point when a trend becomes a way of life?

Having a color tv in your home was once a trend, now, nearly all homes with TVs have color TVs. Is color tv in the home still a trend or has it become a way of life? When did it change from a trend to a way of life?

"Ages" are also known as Technology Periods
Stone Age
Bronze Age
Iron Age
Machine Age (1880–1945)
*Age of Oil (1901–present)
*Jet Age (1940s)
Atomic Age (1945–present)
*The Nuclear Age (1950–present)
*Digital Revolution (1950s–present)
Space Age (1957–present)
Information Age (1970–present)
*The Multimedia Age (1987–present)
*The Social Age (1996–present)
*The Big Data Age (2001–present)

Looking at some of the cutting edge science right now I can think of a few different ages we might experience in the relatively near future.

Nanotechnology Age
*Nanoenergy Age
*Nanomedicine Age
*Nano-Industrial Age

Quantum Age
*Quantum-Energy Age
*Quantum-Transportation Age
**Quantum-Information Age
*Quantum-Presence Age

Automation Age
*Robotics Age
*Cybernetics Age

Artificial Intelligence Age
*Slave AI Age
*AI Singularity Age

As for big trends?
Perhaps....

Medical augmentation by nanomedicine.
-Growing gills, wings, limbs, eyes, etc...
Nanosplicing.
-catbirds, sharktopus, man-apes, whatever...
Nano-environment Gaming
-Special chambers filled with a nano-fog which creates a 3d gaming environment you can physically interact with.
Nano-Batteries.
-Power generation at the atomic level of the matter which makes up the device. Leading to a world without the need for power generation facilities, energy storage, wires or batteries.

Quantum Shopping
-Your fridge, pantry and storage cabinets automatically order resupply using your preset limits.
Quantum Learning
-Educator headsets which teach in the sub-conscious mind.
Quantum Presence
-Allows you to be in presence at more than one place at any given time.
Quantum Printing aka Physical Teleportation
-Ability to send objects over any distance by converting the matter to data and reconverting that data to matter.

Sex Bots
Companion Bots
Housekeeper Bots
Worker Bots
Cybernetic implants
-Allows you to be connected to the internet without a separate device.
Cybernetic augmented humans
Cybernetic augmented pets
Cybernetic augmented zoo animals

Smart cars
Smart houses
Smart factories
Smart devices
-Imagine an internet that knows you, talks to you and teaches you.
Aware cars
Aware houses
Aware ships
Aware trains, trucks and buses
Aware space exploration devices
Aware devices like phones, appliances and wardrobes

LOL, I like science fiction, I like science.
This comes easy for me because my imagination is not stifled by negativity.
Some of the stuff I've written already exists.
Some is way off in the future, if ever.
However, how many people during the stone age could fathom what we currently call normal?

While doing some mild reading I clicked in on a website I've never seen before and it has a lot of interesting article headlines dealing with current and near future technology, innovation and understanding.

Here is the site:
http://www.nextbigfuture.com/category/science/page/10
Its called The Next BIG Future
Some article headlines on that page:

Verifying Each Computing Path of a Quantum Calculation for Correctness

Millimeter Wide Xenobots Are New Robots Made from Living Cells

Ark Invest’s Big Five Technologies in 2020 Will Be Worth Multiple Trillions Around 2030

Another High Efficiency Solar Cell Material for 29+% Efficiency

Densest Object on Earth Made From Compressed Copper

Ocean Plastic Removal is Working

Status and Trends in Super Technology at the Start of 2020

Israel Combines Laser Beams For More Powerful Laser Beams

Aliena and NuSpace work on Nanosat Avionics for Autonomous Constellations

IBM Doubles Its Quantum Volume to 32

Particle Accelerator on a Chip Will Reach a Million Electron Volts by End of 2020

Time Travel Could Be Enabled by Circulating Lasers

Electric Signal Detection from Single Molecules for Molecular Electronics Revolution

Eventual Exabyte DNA Storage on Roswell Molecular Electronic Chips

Reading and Writing Genomes

Gene Editing Record of 27,000 Edits Per Cell for Disease, Radiation and Age Immunities

Molecular Electronics Chip With 100 Million DNA Reading Devices

Leading Edge Biotechnology to Enhance Organs for Cryonics, Space and Transplants

Carnival of Space 643 – Large Parts of Mars has Water 1-12 Inches from Surface

Chip-to-chip Quantum Teleportation and Multi-photon Entanglement in silicon

Narrow Super Intelligences are Near

What are the Limits of Deep Learning? Going Beyond Deep Learning

Millions of Tons of Insects for Animal Feed by 2030 for Hyper-efficient Food Sources

35 Year Satellite Time Lapse of Chinese and US Cities and Dubai

DIPLE Microscope for 35X-1000X and Other Smartphone Devices

General Fusion Has Over US$100 Million to Make a Fusion Demo Plant

Zapata Quantum Computing Makes Breakthrough With Prime Number Factoring

Quantum Simulations That Are Ten Thousand Times Faster

Quantum Computers and Applications Over the Next 5 Years

X-ray Lasers and Electron Beam Nuclear Fusion

World Emits 37 Billion Tons of CO2 for 0.6% Increase But USA CO2 Emissions Drops 1.7%

Pig-Monkey Hybrids Created to Eventually Generate Human Organs in Pigs

Commonwealth Fusion Systems Raised Another $115 Million to Reach ARC Fusion Commercialization Phase Starting 2025

Predictions For 2020 to 2100

A Scattering Shield to Get to Within 10,000 Kilometers of the Surface of the Sun

Near Term Laser Space Propulsion to Move Twenty Times Faster in the Solar System

Pulsed Fission Fusion Propulsion for Faster Manned Travel Through the Solar System

First as Artificial Neurons Developed for Medical Implants

Megawatt Muon-Catalyzed Nuclear Fusion From 100 Watt Lasering of Ultradense Deuterium

Flouride Ion Batteries Could Be Ten Times Better and Cheaper Than Lithium Ion

Military and Civilian Cyborgs by 2050

Ice Cold Saline Has Been Used to Rapidly Cool and Suspend Bodies During Surgery

Carbonics 100 GHz Wafer Scale Nanotube Technology Shows Nanotubes Can Finally Compete With Silicon

Evidence for New Physics Could Mean Fifth Force

Perfect Waveforms for Optical Tweezers to Move Atoms, Molecules and Living Cells

Demographics and the Transition to Over 200 Year Lifespans

DNA Nanobots Used Bacteria’s Chemical Communication and This Enables Intelligent Nanobot Swarms

Thought Operated Random Access Memory Prototype for Implantable Memory Devices for Less Than $200

Nanosecond-pulses Create PolyNitrogen for Future Clean Energy Source

More Accurate Proton Radius is Now 831 Attometers

New Superconducting States Have Been Discovered

Infrared Solar Cells Will Boost Solar Power by Up to 25% and Eventually Double

Human Non-Invasive Direct Brain-to-Brain Communication for Group Problem-Solving

...and more!

Tom,

Things like the Space Age are just headlines. Lots of other stuff are ads to get investors. Like I mentioned the Renaissance is know for ideas, the Industrial Age is known for production, the machine Age is known for movement and the Electronics Age is about information transfer. A rocket ship that landed on the moon is just a machine.

Moving faster, more efficiently and with large tonnage of goods/people/whatever. 1881-1980 we went from clippers to cargo vessels. When my grandfather was a kid the big to do was watching the sailing ships come up the Hudson River as they had a picnic. When he died the big thing was watching the new tv show. He went from mainly horse-n-buggy travel that would take hours to automobiles that took minutes traveling the same distance.

Reading through your posts made me reconsider my thoughts about a guess for the next Age. Energy seems like it's a good bet. Since there's major depletion of resources going on it would be logical. Of cause I believe lots of these geniuses are doing more harm than good in the pursuit of creation and efficiency of it.

Where to add now? The Oculus Quest Virtual Reality system, which is a stand-alone wireless setup and does not require a computer set to run it. You can visit Grand Canyon then Pyramids. You can have a meal break before going into Space and flying around the Solar system where you can enjoy Vy Canis Majoris Supernova, which is a Huge Star, equivalent to 12 billion Suns. After resting, you can join the Apollo 11 crew and take off to the land of Moon. You can add the list longer lol

I think the next BIG thing will be the merging of organics with tech.
AKA: Cybernetics

However, not the cybernetics ya might think of like in movies or TV shows.
True cyborgs are still a long ways off.

I'm talking about medical cybernetics (which already exists) being used in security systems and manufacturing.
Someday soon (relatively) someone is going to graft a brain to a chip.

DNA computing is a branch of computing which uses DNA, biochemistry, and molecular biology hardware, instead of the traditional silicon-based computer technologies. Research and development in this area concerns theory, experiments, and applications of DNA computing.

Its true most of mankind's advancement have been toward moving more and more goods and gaining more and more energy.
However, most recently information is the focus.
Our normal everyday lives focus substantially on gaining and giving information faster and in greater and greater volumes.

Information Technology (IT), enhances our ability to move products and reduces our need for large energy consumption.

Try to imagine life today on a 56k internet connected world.
The slowest thing in IT now is our ability to absorb or distribute information.
The next significant step for mankind will be in our ability to interface with our technology at a faster rate. This can be done with cybernetic augmentation.

Cybernetic augmentation will remove our need for interface devices.
Our bodies (augmented with organic tech) will connect wireless to a worldwide internet grid.
We won't need cell phones, keyboard & mouse or other interface devices like computers or possibly even TVs.
It sounds like something out of science fiction but it is happening right now. Still in its infancy but actively advancing.

Read any cutting edge science website and you see article after article of medical cybernetic break-thrus. You see DNA computing and quantum computing.
You see advances in wireless ability and coverage.

Its our ability to interface with this IT that is the milestone marker of the next big change in human evolution.

Imagine this:
Sometime in the distant future someone will figure out how to make a fully organic enhancement which can be programmed into one's DNA so people will be born with wireless abilities.

Willy warmers
With lights, that play a tune
Available in Elvis and Godzilla versions
Gonna be huge
Total game changer

I had the Elvis one but I had to get rid of it because he was constantly puking.
Back in college I had the Godzilla one but I got rid of that as soon as I got it because it was puking fire.
My doctor gave me a shot and it cleared right up.
As a rule, I learned not to accept 'gifts' from strangers.

Lot lizard skin boots.

Had a pair...

But, they kept suckin' the socks
right off my feet.

RFID mind plants which might revive 4G signals even 5G to make people follow pattered instead of a conscious mind deciding free will.It could cause cancer due to radiation and it’s going to be dangerous.

Look at the teenagers who don’t have sex and get addicted to radiation of cellphones.A Girl loves her cellphone more than her boyfriend.Its because the mind likes radiation frequencies and it gets addicted,similarly RFID could cause such a addictive force which could manipulate us.The Loading Clocklike symbols and circle kept in the height and naturally we avoid looking at the sun.So programming a civilisation for market needs and profits will pull everything apart.Thats why politicians needs Hackers to Run Social media and Elections.It was just too much of hypnosis and cellphone radiation.People are not able to bear the amount of manipulated fake information propagated.Digital hypnosis was used in porn sites to lure innocent people and made their mind crazy.The Dark web and torrent sites has adds which were ment to break people and forming a invisible layer of this kind of Digital criminals who lure innocent people.To introduce a new system they have to put the old one down and crypto currency a new economic system in a difficult time.Global strategies and systems designed to break is not a good system.It cannot be trusted and people need more digital internet protection and children need proper education on safety of using internet.

Light Sabres and Hover Boards.

Really, advanced fibre optics, and energy transfer systems better than batteries of electrical cells.

I think that the next major technologies will come from the commercial exploitation of the Solar system. The harsh and dangerous environment will spur innovation.

Historians intended the naming and definition of "ages" to be instructive, but there was an unintended consequence.

That is, that people who try to learn from the past, come to believe that actual "ages"of this or that, really existed. Some even come to believe that people in the actual time when this or that "age," were aware that a "new age" had begun.

That is often not the case.

Some "ages" were named after the fact, more as a sort of self-worshiping propaganda, than anything else. The "age of reason," for example, might well have been called "the age of the loss of god's will," had regimes based on religion succeeded.

We have been in an age of tumult and great change, for most of my life. There was hope at the start, that this would later come to be known as "the age of Pax Americana," by many. But the US attempts to establish a world-wide peace, too often resulted in new conflicts arising, and in old conflicts re-igniting.

We MIGHT one day look back at this time, and conclude that it was the age of insanity, if the insistence on ignoring climate change, proves to have been in error. Or it may be seen as the age of the defeat of reason, if the various religion based movements succeed in their goals.

Things like DNA research and manipulation, have very deep roots in past ages. This is common to all named "ages" in the past as well: the age of Reason didn't start suddenly, after centuries of people refusing to think, it was named the Age of Reason later, more to reinforce the concept of rule by thought, rather than rule by inheritance, than anything else.

Interesting read and an accurate comparison.
Philosophic Ages do have similarities with Technological Ages in that they both establish via filaments over long periods. No crisp defining start or stop date.
A technological example might be Age of Fire to Age of Electricity.
Technically, we still exist in the Age of Fire but we also exist in the Age of Electricity. We still burn carbon (oil, gas and coal) to power our civilization but we also use other methods for power generation like geothermal, solar, nuclear, wind & water.
At one time, we did not use electricity at all. After we learned to harness electricity not everyone used it. Kinda like indoor plumbing. Many homes used both at the same time.
Now, you are hard pressed to find homes or businesses without it. Yet you can still find them. Just like some homes still have outhouses and hand pump wells. I do wonder if anyone still uses whale oil in oil lamps as a primary lighting system in their home tho?
My home is all electric. I have candles and hurricane lamps in case the power supply gets knocked out but I also have windup flashlight/radios and battery flashlights.
The electricity that powers my home and the businesses near me comes from nuclear power plant (I think?) but other grids still source from coal fired generators. Hydro-power generation powers much of the west coast.

While the Age of Fire still exists, we are definitely in the Age of Electricity too. So much so, people become incapacitated when the electrical supply is removed.
The plumbing that puts water at our beck and call is pumped into our homes by electricity. Even homes using on-site wells need electricity to power the pump.
If power goes out in my home I have no heat, no ventilation but I still have a water supply. If power goes out on the grid, I also lose my water supply.
If I hook up a gas powered generator to my home I'll have HVAC but no water supply. If I had a well with a pump I would. Most homes in my area do not have on-site wells or well pumps.
There is no definite dividing line between these ages. Both exist at the same time.
If a new method of power generation is discovered and released to the public there will be three ages at the same time for a period of time. When electricity and indoor plumbing first became mainstream it existed as a trend. Likewise, a new power generation system will also exist as a trend at first.

If you imagine a tree.
You have the ground (the base structure) which represents the Age of Fire.
Then you have the roots (filaments of a new structure) which represents the beginning of the Age of Electricity.
Then you have the trunk of the tree representing the Age of Electricity.
We are currently at the edge where the trunk is leaving the ground.
Eventually, you have branches and leaves near the top of the tree which might represent the filaments of the next age.
Finally you have the sky representing an age not yet imagined.