The Definition Of Modern

What does it actually mean to be modern? This is one of those questions that you can ask twenty different people, and get twenty different answers. On this blog, I explained why I thought that the measurement of time was a vital factor in the development of civilization in the posting "The Beginning Of Civilization".

Let's see if we can accurately define "modern" today.

Language comes in two forms, spoken and written. My hypothesis is that as society progresses and accumulates more knowledge, more information will be expressed in the written, as opposed to the spoken, form of language. This concept is similar to "The Progression Of Knowledge" on the progress blog, in which I speculated that as society progresses, a higher proportion of data will be expressed in numbers instead of words.

I believe that the amount of verbal communication between humans always remains about the same. But as society progresses and we deal with much more information, the additional information tends to get expressed more in the written form of language.

Historically, the spoken word has been of greater overall importance than the written word. But progress and education eventually brings society to a point where the written language becomes more important, as a whole, than the spoken language. It is at that point, in terms of our times, that society has become "modern" in my definition.

Consider the Chinese language. It is written only one way but can be spoken in two major ways, Mandarin and Cantonese. The Chinese Government makes it clear that it favors (favours) Mandarin, but Cantonese is just too widespread to eliminate and there is no serious effort to do so. But at this point, there is no chance of China splitting apart along spoken language lines.

Now, consider the former Yugoslavia. It's major language was Serbo-Croatian. This language is just the opposite of Chinese. It is spoken in one way, but there are two different ways to write it. Croatians use the Latin alphabet, while Serbs use the Cyrillic (Russian) alphabet.

Comparing China with it's one-time Cold War ally, the former Yugoslavia, China is in no danger whatsover of breaking apart over language differences. In fact, China is much more stable and united today than it was in times past. Meanwhile, Yugoslavia is history.

It is true that Yugoslavia was always a kind of artificial country patched together in the aftermath of World War One. But at least it had a common spoken language, and it held together for more than seventy years.

My hypothesis is that, as time went on and both China and Yugoslavia entered the modern era, the written word became more important, as a whole, than the spoken word. While this is certainly not the only factor in the unity of these two countries, it was a powerful factor in making Yugoslavia less united while China became more united.

It is true that cell phones (mobiles) have really swept the world. But these phones are used mostly for local communications. When phones are used to talk long distance, it is almost always to talk to persons that we already know.

Computer technology, including email, texting and, web sites has given a massive boost to the importance of the written word. This comes on top of greatly increased education and literacy levels across the world. We have entered the modern era with written language having exceeded spoken language in overall importance.

This is what it means to be modern.