The OLD ERA (abbreviated "O.E.") is a blanket term indicating all of human history prior to the New Era. Years given with the "O.E." suffix, indicate the number of years prior to the beginning of the New Era. Thus, Earth's First Nuclear War concluded in 198 O.E. - one-hundred ninety-eight years before the New Era.
The Old Era is often best described in apposition to the New Era. Culturally, it is particularly distinguished from the New Era by four characteristics:
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• Solar Territories - principally Earth - are the locus of most significant events
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• the ongoing struggle across most cultures to protect and magnify the rights of the mob
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• experimentation with a wide variety of political and religious processes to manage or harness the mob
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• corporations entirely subject to the authority of the mob
These hallmarks of the Old Era ended with the dissolving of political processes at the end of the Early Expansion Period, and the consolidation of power in the Three Agencies. Though agencies had been growing steadily in influence, they had always been in competition with political powers. The New Era marked the first period in human history where artificial entities - corporations and the Agencies - were no longer in a position to be exploited by political or human entities. In fact, it became firmly established, in practice, and in law, that the individual existed to serve and enhance the corporation, agency, or other authority which employed it.
This change in consciousness acquired its present shape when a series of technological and environmental disasters on Earth threw the political powers into disorder. The Blue Agency, Coral Agency and Your Agency swiftly consolidated from dozens of smaller agencies and filled the power vacuum. A power-sharing pact was signed between these three new super-agencies in 9 O.E. The year marks the beginning of the Tres Magnae (literally "Big Three") and the power-structure which has persisted until only very recently.
Traditionally, the Old Era concludes 9 years later when the Three Agencies adopted The New Standards - a revolutionary set of contracts and by-laws which marked the triumph of corporatism over the mob/individualist fantasy.
The Expansion Period too is commonly divided into two parts ("Early" and "Late") at the juncture of the Old Era and New Era. This demarcation not only aids in chronological clarity, but also describes the sudden acceleration of human expansion after the rise of the Three Agencies, which until that time had been largely intra-Solar.
OLD ERA
