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Reader question: Please explain “dark ages” in this sentence: Many are still in the dark ages relying on pen, paper and fax machines. My comments: This is a way of saying that many people have not been making their life easier by using computers, e-mail and other up-to-date communications technologies. Today, if you still write on paper instead of clicking away in front of a screen, well, you do appear backward – technologically speaking. Indeed, the phrase “dark ages” represent backwardness, among other negative things. You see, the dark ages or Dark Ages (in capital letters) refer to the middle ages of Europe, roughly between the 5th century and the 15th century, or again roughly speaking after the fall of the Roman Empire and before the Renaissance. The Renaissance, of course, is synonymous with enlightenment, a period where art, culture and modern science began to bud, grow and flourish. In comparison, the dark ages were the exact opposite. To give one example, most people in medieval Europe believed the Earth is flat. That’s just one example but the long and short of it is the dark ages were perceived to be a time of ignorance and backwardness. And, today, when they say so-and-so still lives in the dark ages about something, they mean to say that he or she remains pretty backward in that particular regard and that they haven’t, as the Chinese like to say these days, advanced with the times – as they perhaps should. | 
