Topic: Describing the 20th century?

[segagamersteph]

Recently I was looking through my CD collection (yes I still have CD's) and I realized many of them were in the 20th Century Masters collection. A while ago I was thinking of ideas for a truly not all encompassing but very comprehensive Spotify or radio station playlist/format. I have dabbled in doing internet radio and websites so sometimes I get random ideas and try to develop them.

Well I was giving this some thought and my playlist was going to be focused or centered entirely o the music and culture of the 20th century, based on the premise that t was one of the more profound centuries in human history. Especially looking at a technological and social changes perspective, it seems to me more happened that was of significance to the human race, and the aliens out there watching down on us, in that single 100-year span than any other time span. At least, that was my observation.

Anyways, now I am looking for a word, sentence or short phrase to describe the entire century that could be used as a marketing word, url, or name for a playlist that isn't too long or cumbersome. In other words, if you had to describe the entirety of the 1900's to 1999 as a single entity, what word, or group of words in as few as possible, works best?

Alternatively is there an emotion, idea, philosophy or prevailing ideology that best describes the time period, as a whole? Mostly, of course, from a Western perspective culturally anyways. I thought of globalization but that defeats the purpose of what I was contemplating.

My best examples were things like; post-modern, tumultuous, political upheaval, social justice, social change, technological advancement, technology, science, nuclear, physics, space-age, information-age, global-age, and just the internet age.

Any thoughts?

[Ian Sane]

Internet age seems very much to be a way to describe the 21st century.  The internet appears at the tail end of the 20th century and wasn't really affecting mainstream life until well into the 2000s.  Major internet concepts like social media and smartphones did not exist yet.

For the 20th century I would suggest the electric age.  Electric power was invented in the 19th century but much like with the internet, the century it truly affected was the one to come after.  Electricity was an essential part of our lifestyle in the 20th century.  The power age might work as well to so as to include gas powered devices which were obviously a major part of the century.

Another idea could be the American Age as that was the century where America clearly became the dominant world power.  In different time periods there are different places where history is happening.  It used to be Greece or Rome or England but in the 20th century it was clearly the USA.

[Khushrenada]

It's not necessarily the answer to your query but when people talk about the 20th Century then I can't help but think of the song Twentieth Century by the Pet Shop Boys because I've listened to it enough to make that my first association with the term.

I do like the song and it's softer reflective sound which works well with the lyrics as Neil Tennant sings about his lesson from the Twentieth Century. For those that don't want to a quick listen to the song, here are the lyrics.

Oh, I learned a lesson
from the twentieth century
I don't think we should just dismiss
After one hundred years
of inhumanity
the lesson that I learned was this

Sometimes the solution
is worse than the problem
Let's stay together

Well I bought a ticket
to the revolution
and I cheered when the statues fell
Everyone came
to destroy what was wicked
but they killed off what was good as well

Sometimes the solution
is worse than the problem
Let's stay together

Stay with me
this century
Together we're better

Oh, I learned a lesson
from the twentieth century
It may be somewhat hit or miss
If you've certainty
'bout the way it's all meant to be
the lesson that you need is this

Sometimes the solution
is worse than the problem
Let's stay together

The song is about a plea to stay together rather than break-up with one's partner while using the lesson that the solution is worse than the problem obviously. Yet, it does make a good point about a lot of things that occurred in the 20th Century came from the solution to a previous problem. The line in the middle verse about revolution and "Everyone came to destroy what was wicked but they killed off what was good as well" is one that sticks in my brain from this song particularly with technological progress that can be good for an advancement of human progress yet can result in people losing a bit of their past as it causes changes in behavior.

So, that song is my go-to response for describing the 20th Century. Thinking about another way to sum it up just ended up as something that could be applied to any era of history. I was thinking something along the lines of: "Mankind contending with changes either self-created or by external forces and fighting those changes with or from advancing technology". To me, that encompasses things like the Bolshevik Revolution leading to Communist Russia and the fall-out from that, the two World Wars, the Depression dustbowl era, the Space Race, how cities are built and created, the rise of Fast Food but then fighting the effects of litter, waste or what effect that food can have on a person, the spreading and fighting of diseases from Spanish Flu to AIDS. Even stuff like movies, radio, tv, music were all affected by changes in technology and how to use it or stay relevant. With music, you're going from almost still classical at the start of the century to Jazz to Rock and Roll to EDM by the end.

[Order.RSS]

Maybe look into authors who propose the anthropocene started with the first atom bomb tests in 1945? I won't pretend to know all of it, but I believe the argument goes something like: once humans learned to split the atom, they truly claimed the current historical epoch as their own. Holding the power to destroy the world and themselves, while having removed most other natural threats (arguably barring only climate change, which is at least partially human-made), the whims of humans will now dictate the literal course of nature.

[segagamersteph]

Okay wow cool responses. Mostly I was fishing for an idea for a website for a friend of mine. Turns out someone else beat me to it and did a better job too.

On the up side, it got me to discover some really fascinating YouTube channels. I love history.


Wow Steef, that was heavy stuff but I enjoyed thumbing through it.

Also holy crap I should have checked this thread earlier, I literally just last night downloaded a bunch of Pet Shop Boys songs once I discovered I somehow was missing them entirely from my music collection. Good thing for iTunes.

[Khushrenada]

Are you familiar with the Pet Shop Boys Discography or are you just getting into them now?

[segagamersteph]

I am a child of the 80's. West End Girls was on the soundtrack to my childhood. It was on the same mix tape as Duran Duran's Reflex, Depeche Mode's Policy of Truth, Debbie Gibson's enchanting Electric Youth (pack of lies btw), Edwyn Collin's A Girl Like You, B-52's Channel Z, and just for fun the Macarena Los Del Rio Bay Side Boys mix. If I am not mistaken Expose's Point of No Return (my all time favorite song ever) was also on that same tape.

I am short on funds so I only grabbed three of their songs but they were the three most important to me; West End Girls, Let's Make Lots of Money and Suburbia. When I was working steady and collecting CD's on a regular basis I was focused on mostly wrapping up my 90's alternative, G-funk and MTV boy/girl bands collection, so my 80's stuff is very lacking at the moment. I have no less than 12 80's compilations, greatest hits, etc., not a single one had a single song by Pet Shop Boys. I don't know how I missed that.

I do have Devo's greatest hits, Eurythmics live double cd, every song Madonna has ever recorded, Thriller and Bad by MJ and I think that's about it for 80's albums. No wait I have the Hewey Lewis and the News greatest hits and several soundtracks like Footloose, Top Gun, Ghostbusters, a few others.

I just had to get through my 90's teen years first before I could go back to the fun of the 80's. I do have plenty of the hair metal bands though, that was more important I guess than all the pop stuff.