Long Ago

"Now, class, does anyone remember how long the Information Age was? When did it start, when did it end, and why?"
The class is silent for a second, until suddenly brains begin to click and you hear the tap-tap-tapping of the fingers on the desks. The room glows that familiar eerie blue of artificial screen light, and you can see the faces bent down towards their interfaces, glowing that same blue.
"Come on, guys! We went over this yesterday. None of you remember? Not a single thing?"
A shy light goes up. Of course, because they can't bear the silence and the fidgety teacher.
"Yes, finally. Tana?"
"Was it that thing, that uh.. That era where people went away from the thing called, uh, uh, reli--religor or something like that? Like, uh.. you know. When they stopped believing in fake things and they started to look more into science? I uh.. I think it started in the 2400s? I don't really remember..."
"Oh, are you talking about the Renaissance?"
"Oh, yeah! The Renaissance. Right. Whoops. Heh.."
"It's okay. And just me being a Cultural Evs teacher, all OCD, I'll correct you with some things. The Renaissance was in the 1400s, a thousand years before the 2400s, and yes, you were right. They started to depend less on religion. But they didn't completely go away from religion. This 'religion' stayed around for quite a while longer. The Scientific Renaissance--I'm sorry guys, I know the names are similar, you'll just have to get used to it--the Scientific Renaissance happened thousands of years after the first, original Renaissance. And guys, does anyone remember from Cultural Ev 4--what Renaissance means?"
The class looks up. Well, the people who weren't already. A few kids raise their hands. The few who paid attention in Human Ev 4 back in 4th grade. The few who have the courage to raise their lights. Green lights bob in the air above their desks.
"Hmm.. who didn't I pick on today... How about, you? Wyatt?"
He looks up from his little hacking game. The volume isn't muted, and you can hear the soft click, click, beep. "Uhhh. Sorry?"
"I see you've been indulging yourself in some hacking activities in our very inspirational Human Cultural Evolutions 9 class. Since you were so kind to pay attention in class, let me ask you another question. Do you know when hacking became a legally accepted job and which Amendment enforced this?"
"Isn't the amendments from like, third grade? The amendments--they're like, from the Second World Era. That was the whole bombing and war era, wasn't it? Amendments. Was that an army? I don't know. But yeah, Renaissance means rebirth."
Of course, Wyatt manages to startle the teacher again.
"Well I'd like to tell you that you are right about the amendments being from the SWE, but they also carried onto the TWE, Third World Era. And hacking was legalized in TWE, in the 230th amendment. As for the Renaissance, it does mean rebirth. It was the rebirth of mankind to think and begin innovating and creating in a completely new direction and meaning."
He looks up, remembering, his head lifting out of his clouds of passion in the subject--he remembers what he was initially intending to drive towards.
"Yes. So, class." Claps his hand in a clear-cutting sound that wakes up the attention of the class. "The Information Age. Anyone?"
Green lights bob up in the air.
"Now, that's more like it. Let's see... that light over there. You're so far back. Who--oh yes! Harper, let's see what you found."
"Well," the small voice echoes from the back of the room. "It says here that--" she swipes her screen onto the front of the classroom. "Can you see it?"
"Yes, thank you, Harper. Continue--Oh, I love this website! The Worldwide Human Cultures Website! They have so much here! I love it. Sorry. Continue?"
"Heh. Yeah, so anyway. The Information age--nobody's really sure when it started, but people say it started somewhere near the mid 1900s, and it ended actually a while afterwards--it's one of the longer eras of the Second World Era--it ended near the 2300s. That's like, four hundred years. Anyway. It started, Human Ev Pros say that it was because they just started to learn how to harness electronics, and molecular technology. A huge advance was nuclear technology and also in robotics. Oh, and also in science. Look here! It says that they had a huge advance in science in the 2080s. That's also when they started to wean off of religion, like what Tana said."
"That was perfect, Harper, thank you. Could you swipe your screen back down, please?--Thank you. Okay. That was a perfect summary. The Information Age. It's the advancement--are you guys Thinking this down? It's the advancement of science, math, and technology. It is, statistically, when you look at it cumulatively, the most improvement that we humans have gone through in a single era. Well, of course, it was a pretty long period of time--you can't ignore 400 years of development, but it was an astounding amount of information gained at that time. Some scientists near the end of the era, sincerely believed they were reaching the end of what they could reach and learn from as humans. Of course, we now know that is wrong. But at the time, it was a massive, monstrous amount of information for humans to digest in a mere--yes, I'm using the word mere for this--a mere four hundred years."
A green light.
"Yes, Danika?"
"Why did it start? Why did it end? Sorry, I didn't really get to Think it down."
"It's fine. And I will clarify--it's really important. Maybe I didn't mention this. The Info Age was started because there were many diseases--which is when your body does not function normally due to a hereditary mutation or an acquired mutation (if you guys remember from biology). Lots of doctors--the people who would fix these diseases--it's a lot of vocab words from a while ago, I know--lots of doctors wanted to improve or find a way to prevent these diseases. It was also the curiosity of many, and also the hardships of life and the willingness to improve the state of life.
Green light. But they don't wait. "Are there still diseases today?"
The teacher looks up. "Ah, no, Brice. There may be a few lingering around, but that is in the lower parts of the Earth, and they have immediate treatment, where they fix the disease. It's only minor ones, too. You guys know those yearly shots? They're to prevent you from many diseases that may still harm you."
The students murmur in their little thoughts of recalling their recent shots.
"And why the Info Age ended. Why did it end? Well, people began to notice that too much info would be worse than having too little info. It became more dangerous rather than helpful, and too revealing rather than quenching our thirst for knowledge. At a certain point, we went into Microinformatics--whose meaning has changed after quite a while, but our definition of microinformatics is finding out more about the subjects and material we already know--knowing in more detail and precision of the things that we already know."
The class is quiet, save for the tap-tap-tapping of students Thinking down their Thoughts.
"Fun fact. Did you know that the Information Age was the age with the most information discovered that contradicted each other? At one point in the time period, people found out about things that contradicted material found in some point in the time period before. People kept getting confused, and it made for lots of arguments between scientists."
The teacher sees that less and less kids are paying attention and more and more are going back to their paused hacking game (or whatever those kids play these days) that they had been playing in math class.
"Alright!" He jumps up, which quite naturally brings the attention of the students. Screens change color back to the usual blue glow instead of the orange glow from the game, and eyes avert from the screen back to the teacher, standing at the front and bouncing on his heels.
"I'm handing out a worksheet. It's a chart of the ideas at the beginning of the Info Age, or before. Then the next column is what the scientists found out and how they changed that theory. For example--the most common one that we all know it the heart and the brain. Before, we used to think that the heart was the main part of our body that held life. We now know that in humans, there is a mental and physical core--the brain and the heart. I know, you guys were probably thinking of that. But you're going to have to look another one up. It's too easy! Challenge yourselves.
"The back side is about contradictory theories made throughout the Info Age, and indicating which one is correct. Put a star next to it, circle it, highlight it, comment it, whatever.
"This shouldn't be too hard, since you have your library online. Work with partners--I'll be assigning them."
The teacher pulls out the randomizer. It is a little square 3" by 3" panel with four colors on it--blue, green, red, or yellow--each in a corner of the square. It's funny, he thinks, that they would put these four colors to make you feel like you're the one choosing your fate or choosing the randomization, when no matter what color you choose, it just initializes the randomizer and randomly pairs the class--not that each color has a different combination of pairs in it. It doesn't matter what color you pick, he thinks--you'll just get the same randomization.
But he stops thinking to himself and looks up at the class. "Which color should I pick--blue, green, red, or yellow?"
"Yellow!"
"Green!"
"Anything!"
"Blue!"
"The first one!"
"Yellow!"
A chorus of colors and replies spring into the air.
"Well, I guess I heard green the most."
Some kids groan.
The teacher taps on the green area of the randomizer.
Instantly, each student meets the hologram of their partner in their V-screen. Instantly, the teacher's views of the students is disturbed by the translucent, hovering screen that is in front of each student's face. The students put on their Earplug Earphones and the built-in microphones. Each student hears, now, only their partner and nothing else. Perhaps the beating of their own heart. But nothing else.