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Interesting perspective. With regard to the historical value, though, I think that the volume of information cheapens the value of most of it. The kinds of thin
by sverige 8y ago
Interesting perspective. With regard to the historical value, though, I think that the volume of information cheapens the value of most of it. The kinds of things that move people and events so that future generations can understand what happened are still preserved -- maybe not all the details, but enough. Of course, there could be some great catastrophe that wipes out most of the collective memory, but the broad outlines are still there and will continue to be there in some form, because ultimately the really important memories are preserved in the minds of those who were affected by them and passed along in some form to the next generation.
So, the burning of the library at Alexandria was a catastrophe for our understanding of ancient civilization, but enough was preserved that we still have what is essentially a Greco-Roman understanding and practice of government, philosophy, history, etc.
Closer to our day, I remember things that were told to me about events that happened over 100 years ago by people who lived through them or who knew people who lived through them. For example, my mom has told me about how her Uncle Henry wheezed when she was a kid in the 30s because he was exposed to chemical warfare in the trenches of France during the Great War. My dad's stories of growing up on a farm during the Depression and World War II likewise tie in nicely with things I have read about the larger events at the time; e.g., he once mentioned how they received extra gas ration stamps once they bought a tractor because they were farmers producing food needed for the war effort. (They farmed with horses until 1942.)
So I feel like I have a pretty good understanding of what life was like for my parents and grandparents because of what they told me. Do I have anything like a complete record of it? No, but I don't need it. Do my children need it? Sure, but they don't really understand what actual Nazis were because that word has been misused and misapplied ever since Gore Vidal used that tactic to "win" an argument with William F. Buckley 50 years ago. And I can tell them about that and why it's important, but it doesn't seem to register because they were never taught any details of what happened in the 30s in Europe, and don't really have a sense of what that generation suffered through as a consequence of the toxic ideologies that flourished during that era.
So please forgive me, but while long posts like this on the internet might be interesting to a tiny percentage of us, for most of the people who live in the future they will at the very best be reduced to a one-sentence quote by some future Ken Burns-like documentarian read by some future Morgan Freeman-like actor.
- formerentourage 8y ago> So, the burning of the library at Alexandria was a catastrophe for our understanding of ancient civilization, but enough was preserved that we still have what is essentially a Greco-Roman understanding and practice of government, philosophy, history, etc. I think that's a bold statement. This is circular reasoning: since we know resources that we have, obviously we know what they do contain. I remember university lectures on ancient Roman history, conducted by a serious researcher in the field, where he said how our general understanding of Roman political system could be changed if we had a couple inches less (or more) of papyrus of Festus: an author who lived way after the interesting stuff but managed to survive. In fact historical writings that are preserved for us seem to have seriously warped our understanding (in a pro-Senate & optimates, conservative way). Only relatively recently we are trying to correct that by reaching for some more obscure sources and reading more closely. Many important things we will never know. Obviously people caring about history will be always a small portion of the population, just as with many other pursuits.
- sverige 8y agoI don't know. We've got a lot of the main writers, and we've got references to some of the books that were lost forever in the fire. I agree that there was some valuable information lost in the fire. But in the main, I think the broad outlines were preserved, or we probably would't even have the concept of circular reasoning. Obviously there was a period where much of that was irrelevant anyway, after the barbarian hordes overran the weak and degenerate remnants of the Roman empire. When the revival came over half a millenium later, did they get it all right? Probably not, but it was a definite change from what existed in the interim. And some of that culture was preserved through the Roman church, though in a muted way. More to the point of the original discussion, are you really concerned that anything of lasting value would be lost if the entire internet were deleted? Maybe technical information, sure, but culturally not so much imo.
- formerentourage 8y agoTBH internetization of reality is still very much an ongoing process, likely to expand much further in the future. At least if we want to extrapolate, there might be a backlash, who knows (I can imagine internet gaining a boring, authoritarian image like television around the turn of milennium). "Big" political events had an important online aspect in recent years. New cultural phenomena, art genres etc. emerge here. I have to admit, imagining nuking the entire internet is funny intellectually. It would leave us with a low connectivity, low-res "slow" version of history, something more resembling "long 1990s" or what a stubborn pre-milennial person may still be experiencing now. Would it be warped beyond recognition? Probably not, not yet. You could still reconstruct Western societies in broad strokes. But I think the cultural history at least would suffer significantly.