Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation (1981), “History: A Retro Scenario,” pp. 43–44.
The Vanishing of the Decade
Whereas so many generations, and particularly the last, lived in the march of history, in the euphoric or catastrophic expectation of a revolution — today one has the impression that history has retreated, leaving behind it an indifferent nebula, traversed by currents, but emptied of references. It is into this void that the phantasms of a past history recede, the panoply of events, ideologies, retro fashions … simply to resurrect the period when at least there was history, at least there was violence (albeit fascist), when at least life and death were at stake.
How the algorithmic matrix broke the linear perception of time and dissolved the structure of the decade.
There was a time when decades were distinct. One could recognize them by hairstyles, furniture, perfume, advertising, music, and a thousand other details. The 1990s brought with them the last breath of an era marked with clarity.
In 2025, if you asked someone, "What were the 2010s like?" the answer might be vague: "Was there more Facebook and less TikTok?"
Decades are no longer solid reference points or clear annotations
For both new and old generations, time is no longer a recognizable unit, but an unbroken mass of scrolls, remixes and flows. Attributable not so much to virtuality as to the virtualization of life itself.
Forms of modern life may differ in quite a few respects – but what unites them all is precisely their fragility, temporariness, vulnerability and inclination to constant change. To 'be modern' means to modernize – compulsively, obsessively; not so much just 'to be', let alone to keep its identity intact, but forever 'becoming', avoiding completion, staying underdefined.
As Zygmunt Bauman wrote in "Liquid Modernity," this fragility and impermanence have become the defining characteristics of our age. No longer solid and defined decades, but a constant stream of changes that overlap and dissolve into each other.
The present has expanded.
The very idea of epoch [from Gr. epochḗ (astérōn) 'arrest, position (of the stars),' where stars are term of chronological reference; deriv. of epéchein 'to hold, to suspend.'] has become a social filter.
Modern man is actually close to the picture Huxley describes in his Brave New World: well fed, well clad, satisfied sexually, yet without self, without any except the most superficial contact with his fellow men, guided by the slogans which Huxley formulated so succinctly, such as: “When the individual feels, the community reels”; or “Never put off till tomorrow the fun you can have today,” or, as the crowning statement: “Everybody is happy nowadays.” Man’s happiness today consists in “having fun.” Having fun lies in the satisfaction of consuming and “taking in” commodities, sights, food, drinks, cigarettes, people, lectures, books, movies—all are consumed, swallowed.
Erich Fromm, The Art of Loving (1956)
Almost a century after that quote in the quote, already there were the sedimenta of contemporary society.
The decades were frames, if not actual paintings, but also mythologies in miniature. Perhaps the human body itself was delineated to resonate in that time frame. A decade was not just a time period but a symbolic container, a collective identity: a way of dressing, speaking, dreaming.
In the 1920s there was a vibrant modernity: cabaret and silent movies changed habits and looks.
In the 1930s, despite the crisis, popular culture exploded on a global scale.
In the 1960s ideas of sexual revolution circulated, the perception of a "future coming" (JFK, LSD, miniskirts, moon landing)¹.
In the 1990s, at least until the middle of the decade, bodies were moving in backyards and on the streets, sweat on their faces and t-shirts stretched out, bonds built without words, between jumping, running, waiting.
Then the break.
The arrival of the new millennium marked a perceptual rupture in the flow of history, marking in effect the beginning of a new era. September 11, 2001, pressed the pause button on the past century. The Twin Towers became, plastically, the very symbol of that interruption: two parallel bars, like the universal symbol for "pause" on remote controls, silhouetted on the timeline of modernity.
In those days, the media also intercepted this feeling: MTV broadcast a few-second commercial in which, simply, the screen froze on the two vertical lines, evoking silence, suspension, the impossibility of going on as before.
It was not just a TV break, but an existential stop, an emotional watershed that redefined the perception of time and the future itself. From that moment, the illusion of linear, unstoppable time was broken. We have entered the age of the loop, where each year can be remixed, suspended, archived or rewritten as a media file.
The late 90s and early 00s were built on obsession with control and terror over uncertainty: Y2K, 9/11, surveillance cameras. After the invasion of Afghanistan (2001) and Iraq (2003), Western television and global media frequently began to show images of war, bombings, car bombs, executions, and-in some cases-beheadings claimed by jihadist groups (such as Al-Qaeda and then ISIS).
From about 2005 onward, the real revolution came, in the form of the Internet. First blogs, then YouTube, Facebook, etc.
Since then, each year has lost its own form. No clear boundaries. No symbolic break. What really differentiates 2010 from 2017? 2008 from 2015? Nothing but an updated algorithm.
Not only the concept of decade, but Time itself, seems to have collapsed, at least by the standards inculcated in the last century. Today, pop culture is an endless playlist. You can be goth, Y2K, cottagecore and punk on the same day. Time has stopped layering. Any attempt to acknowledge the past is staged as dreamlike nostalgia. The decades of the last century and new, have become a TikTok aesthetic, compressed into a nightcore song or vaporvawe video.
Until the twentieth century, each year presented itself as a compact block: "one thousand nine hundred ninety four" sounds full-bodied, almost material, and our gaze recognizes four digits dense with history. From 2000 onward, however, the "two" followed by three zeros creates an optical and phonetic hole: "two thousand" is short, aseptic, lacking in temporal "corpus." This numerical rarefaction reflects the sense of an era without defined decades, suspended in an eternal present that dissolves time.
There is an overlooked aspect in the way we perceive years: their numerical density.
In the last century, years were counted in four dense, full-bodied, heavy digits.
Picking two years at random, 1984 and 1995. The eye reads their visual fullness, like a compact body.
The mouth pronounces them with structured rhythm: one thousand nine hundred ninety four.
The ear feels their sonorous gravity.
It was not just time: it was embodied rhythm. Our gaze, hearing and mouth recognize (at least now) four figures dense with history.
Each year had a sound, a body, an identity.
A numerical branding that resonated in language and memory.
The numbers were time.
Then comes the year two thousand.
And from there on something goes blank.
2000: two + zero + zero + zero.
An optical hole, a dry, almost post-human code.
Vowel-wise, two thousand - short, dry, aseptic.
And that final "thousand?"
Vague, neutral, abstract. Not yet, not rooting, not leaving marks.
"Two thousand and twenty": two thousand and twenty.
A mechanical expression without flesh
In the last century, every figure was history.
The year 2000 did not open an era.
It probably dissolved it, dematerializing it into an eternal present with no decade nor edge or pillar to rest on.
A time that does not stratify, but weakens until it surrenders the scepter.
The new switch came between 2020 and 2022 with the coronavirus (sic). Society suddenly came to a halt, frozen in the endless stream of obligatory virtuality. Empty streets and a full screen created the second perceptual reset since 9/11.
The day is a succession of stimuli embedded in the environment: lights and doors that turn on and open as we pass, and routes suggested by Google Maps dissolve time into the new invisible ecosystem that interpenetrates us.
This permeability has made every moment fleeting: memories overlap in a map of data, and every second leaves digital traces before it even becomes memory to be stored inside the device, whether notes or photos. Time today neither tells us nor allows itself to be told. And as our everyday lives are being shaped by algorithmic flows, we experience a true decorpification of time: just as the decade has lost consistency, so too will we and our bodies, as is already happening by often storing information externally in our devices. It is not our devices that set the pace, but it is the algorithm that has interpenetrated us, punctuating the day through density of interaction, sensory triggers, and constant streams of data.
Unforeseen events aside, the third phase will probably be the materic entry of AI
and a cognitive era in which perception is intertwined with predictive flows shared among neural networks, connected bodies, and sentient intelligences, suspending all boundaries between biological experience and algorithmic fabric.
¹ It should be noted that many of these movements were largely influenced, if not orchestrated, by Western intelligence strategies. Studies such as Who Paid the Piper? by Frances Stonor Saunders demonstrate CIA funding of magazines, conferences and artists to steer public opinion.
Similarly, programs such as FBI and CIA's COINTELPRO and Operation CHAOS lurked within peace and cultural movements, as evidenced in Church Committee investigations.
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