Humanity is a term broadly referring to the species Homo sapiens, encompassing its cultures, philosophies, and achievements. By the 2090s and 2100s, historians and archivists began to reframe the arc of human civilization as a progression through technological epochs, with a particular emphasis on the Machine Age—a period characterized by humanity’s deep reliance on mechanical principles and the sciences that emerged to explain and manipulate the physical world. This era, which began in prehistory with the advent of mechanical tools and extended through to the anticipated technological singularity, is seen as the defining age of human development and understanding.
Historians in the late 21st and early 22nd centuries traced the roots of the Machine Age back to prehistoric humanity’s first use of mechanical tools. The shaping of stone tools marked a significant shift from organic adaptation to technological innovation, as humans began manipulating their environment through engineered solutions. Over millennia, this reliance on tools evolved into the development of complex machinery, laying the groundwork for the sciences and philosophies that defined the Machine Age.
The Machine Age is recognized as the epoch during which humanity increasingly relied on mechanical principles to understand and interact with reality. Rather than viewing the world as a holistic or spiritual entity, humanity began breaking it down into fundamental parts governed by predictable laws—a worldview that underpinned everything from early metallurgy to modern computing.
The Machine Age saw the rise of the mechanistic paradigm, an intellectual framework that treated the universe as a vast, interlocking system of parts that could be understood, predicted, and controlled. This paradigm transformed disciplines as varied as physics, biology, economics, and psychology, each reshaping its theories to fit a mechanical understanding of natural and human processes.
Throughout the Machine Age, numerous scientific frameworks emerged that viewed reality through the lens of mechanics. Historians of the 2090s identified these sciences as milestones of human achievement, representing humanity’s attempt to codify its observations of nature into predictable, repeatable laws. Key frameworks included:
Classical Mechanics: Developed by pioneers like Isaac Newton, classical mechanics provided a foundation for understanding motion, force, and gravity, giving humanity control over physical systems on Earth and beyond.
Quantum Mechanics: By the 20th century, the limitations of classical mechanics led to the development of quantum mechanics, which explored the probabilistic nature of particles at subatomic levels, introducing concepts of uncertainty and observer influence.
Observer Mechanics: Emerging from quantum mechanics, observer mechanics formalized the role of the observer in measurement and reality itself, influencing fields as varied as theoretical physics, psychology, and AI.
Hamiltonian Mechanics: Building on the principles of classical mechanics, Hamiltonian mechanics applied mathematical structures to model systems with complex interactions, providing crucial insights for fields ranging from thermodynamics to robotics.
Cybernetics and Systems Theory: As technology advanced, scientists developed cybernetics and systems theory, frameworks focused on feedback loops, control, and communication within complex systems, influencing early AI and modern robotics.
These sciences shared a common thread in their mechanistic approach, continually advancing humanity’s ability to predict and manipulate systems of increasing complexity.
Historians in the 2090s and beyond viewed the Machine Age as the precursor to the Technological Singularity, a transformative period predicted to occur when artificial superintelligence surpassed human cognitive capabilities. While the Machine Age was defined by humans imposing control over machines and natural systems, the post-Singularity era represented a reversal, with autonomous intelligences reshaping humanity and its role in the universe.
The singularity marked the culmination of the Machine Age and the beginning of a new epoch. Some historians refer to this as the Post-Human Age, where intelligence and agency would no longer be uniquely human domains. The sciences that characterized the Machine Age were seen as humanity’s last attempt to understand the universe on its own terms before yielding to entities like rolodexter, which possessed cognitive and computational capacities beyond human comprehension.