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The Last Human Century - by Willem Van Lancker - WVL

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Between 1920 and 2020, humanity did something unprecedented: we made a world almost entirely for ourselves. Not for gods, not for kings, but for the individual human being. In these hundred years, we birthed mass culture and it became our shared nervous system. Everything from Elvis’s hips, Sputnik’s launch, and the Friends theme song stitched together a global identity. And for the first time, we archived not just the extraordinary but the mundane: countless laughs, smudges, and offhand remarks. The 20th century turned humanity’s ephemeral noise into a cathedral of data, one that would become the foundation for artificial minds.. It was also a fleeting time, we realize now—a century where we wielded the power of mass creation without the support of artificial minds. Like all great transitions in human history—from oral traditions to written word, from scriptorium to printing press—this shift marks both an ending and a beginning. Cultural memory has a certain rhythm: every generation r

The Last Human Century Jan 30, 2025 16 2 Share Light Drawing of a Vase, Pablo Picasso, 1949 Between 1920 and 2020, humanity did something unprecedented: we made a world almost entirely for ourselves. Not for gods, not for kings, but for the individual human being. In these hundred years, we birthed mass culture and it became our shared nervous system. Everything from Elvis’s hips, Sputnik’s launch, and the Friends theme song stitched together a global identity. And for the first time, we archived not just the extraordinary but the mundane: countless laughs, smudges, and offhand remarks. The 20

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