The Modern period was not misnamed. True, the ordinary word “modern” is associated with “new” and “now”, but the historical period we call Modern chose to associate itself with the “new” and the “now” in such a deep way that we actually see the breakdown of the whole notion of periods. The Modern period is the period that refuses to die. The world is now an odd mix of the Modern and the postmodern. Oddly, it’s not just because the Modern refuses to die, but also because the postmodern refuses to kill the Modern. But then, the postmodern refuses to kill anything completely.

Larry Wall, “Perl, The First Postmodern Computer Language”