The Polycene is not a New Era

This is getting attention:

The Polycene is a proposed new geological/historical epoch describing our current era, characterized by the entanglement of multiple global crises (a "polycrisis") like climate change, AI proliferation, geopolitical shifts, and social fragmentation, moving beyond simple binaries into a complex, interconnected, multi-dimensional world demanding new governance, ethics, and design thinking. Coined by thinkers like Thomas L. Friedman, it signifies a time where technology, society, and the environment interact faster and more profoundly than ever, creating both immense challenges and opportunities for collective adaptation.

Friedman explains here and here.

This is backwards. In the late 19th and XX century we got running water, electricity, motor cars, telecommunications, antibiotics, world wars, computers, television, electronic chips, air travel, modern math and physics, etc.

By contrast, the 21st century has been boring. Progress has slowed to a crawl.

The most exciting development has been AI. It is bigger than anything else in the last 30 years. But in retrospect, it was just the inevitable consequence of XX century inventions. There are not many new ideas. It is mainly the neural nets of 50 years ago, run on chips that are faster according to the Moore's law of the 1960s.