1945 : the climatic Battle over MODERN synthetic penicillin vs POSTMODERN natural penicillin

    If we see Postmodernity as organic and natural, versus High Modernity's love for the synthetic and the man-made (and I think we all do) why then do we focus on 1945's Auschwitz and Hiroshima as the climatic revelations that signal the switch from the Era of Modernity to the Era of post-Modernity ?

Scientism's powerful ability to unite the polar opposites of CUT and RUN

     Scientism is the unbreakable faith belief that human mindpower will inevitably triumph over anything mere Nature can throw up.
     While its days of unquestioned total hegemony was only between 1875 and 1965, it still dominates the political and economic classes and is successfully winning back intellectual hegemony among the environmentalist classes, through the back door of hard core SF films and books.

Like BOOMERS, High Modernity kids divided into early and late stages

     From 1873 to 1893 to 1913, people in North America went through first the 20 years of the long depression and then the 20 years of the long boom (in Canada much better known as the Wheat or Rail Boom).
   Children born early in the Era of High Modernity , say between 1870 and 1885, were old enough to fully enjoy the fruits of that long Edwardian summer of optimism and exuberance between 1893-1913.
   And then were often too old to enjoy the mud (and death) of the Great War.
   Those born after 1885 and on until 1900 felt cheated - they had missed the boom Edwardian Years but got to enjoy all of the mud and all of the death of WWI.

Recession malaise and technological growth co-exist quite nicely ...

    As the Euro-woes and the American toxic mortgage scandals stall the global economy ( stall its growth rate a little - its not as if the whole world has stopped breathing or something), some sectors of the economy are still going gangbusters.
   As their cousins did during the long 1870s-1890s recession-depression and during the Great Depression 1929-1942.
    Currently it is mobile electronics that is absorbing all the free cash going, and asking for even more, as it throws up cellular towers and fibre optic links everywhere.
   New technological wonders alway find ready money in depressions as the 'smart money' tries desperately to get on board the next 'new thing' , whatever it might be, in an effort to survive and even flourish during hard times for the rest of business.

HIGH MODERNITY's technology versus its science...

    By 1900, as Vaclav Smil reminds us ,most of the technology (machines, 'things' in David Edgerton's sense of that word) around us today had been invented and was in active use: as well as being further commercially developed and technically improved.
   They are still in use, still under constant commercial development and steady technological improvement.
   They are the fruits of the generation of The Children of High Modernity.

"The Children of HIGH MODERNITY" (1870 -1970)

     The generation of The Children of  High Modernity was born after 1870 and before the death of Queen Victoria in 1901.
     'Their War' was the Great War, WWI.
   They had children, usually when they were between 20 and 40.
    For their kids, 'their war' was WWII and they were flattered by being called "The Greatest Generation" by younger authors who wanted to sell lots of books to them.
    Their grandchildren were usually born between 1940 and 1960, the (Atomic) Boom Generation : 'their war' was Vietnam.
    For example, my grandfathers were born in the 1890s and served in WWI. Their kids were born in the 1920s and served in WWII.
     I, like virtually all their grandkids was born in the 1950s.
    While, as a Canadian, I wasn't expected to serve in Vietnam, some kids at my two high schools did volunteer to go do so.

Bugger-off Hippies ! - it was crewcutted NASA types what killed Modernity

    High Modernity was animated by a single generation of scientists,  children born after the invention of the Dynamo and who died before the invention of Disco: roughly after 1870 and before 1970.
   Alfred Newton (Newt) Richards, medical strong man of the famous wartime OSRD R&D outfit, whose dates (1876-1966) span the age almost perfectly, is an example of one such scientist who was influential when young and who continued to be highly influential up to the year he died.
   A lot of important scientific discoveries and technological inventions happened in the 1870s, but there were a few highly influential bloopers as well.