To answer this question, I simply posed a slightly different one:
"Is there any time period I would rather live in than the current one?"
I think we all go through the "It would be really neat to talk to [Jesus/Socrates/Lincoln/Li Po/Whoever]" phase, but then reality sinks in. Would I really want to give up the internet, toilet paper, cars, glasses, antibiotics, representative government, and all the rest of it? Technology plays a major role in shaping my opinion that our period in history is the greatest one to date.
Beyond that, however, we live in a period where (to my knowledge) the greatest percentage of the human race in history lives under representative governments. Smallpox has been eradicated. Internet and cellphone coverage around the globe is on the rise.
I would say that the worst thing about this time in history is that not all parts of the world have advanced at the same pace and we are now seeing the consequences of the exploitation that took place in bringing the great western powers into the position they now occupy. Living in subsaharan Africa today is probably not considerably better than living in Europe in the Middle Ages, for example. The best I can say about this sorry situation is that the wealthier half of human civilization no longer lives like this. Clearly, our goal for the future should be the eradication of starvation-enducing extreme poverty. In comparison with the past, however, I must conclude that having half the human race living in extreme poverty is preferable to having virtually everyone in that position, as was the case prior to the development of modern social security institutions.
My answer, then, is that we are living in the best time period (define how you like) so far in human history. I like to think my children will see a still better one, though.
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The peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error. ~John Stuart Mill, On Liberty
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