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Yes, "modern" is in vogue right now. During the 90s I remember the word got so overused that designers turned to the word "contemporary" to mean exactly the same thing. We'll probably start seeing that word used for software soon.

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In my art history classes in the late 90s, I remember 'modern' specifically being used to refer to a period between the 1900s ~ 1980s, while 'contemporary' just means the current period, whether that's 1999 or 2019. So not, those words are not the same.

Somewhere along the way, 'modern' has now come to refer to the current trends.

To me (not a designer), modern connotes modernism. But contemporary just means "current" or "present day". I could be totally wrong about this, but I always try to use contemporary unless I'm specifically referring to modernist art/design philosophy.

(SenHeng beat me to it)

Contemporary is a good word to use in discussions like these, because it's halfway to acknowledging that the choices of the moment may be as much fashion / aesthetics of a sort as they may reflect new heights of engineering quality.

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