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Imagine the archeologists in the year 100,000, sorting through rock samples and going "oh look, there's the mask pollution from the great 2020 pandemic"
by thedudeabides5 6y ago
Imagine the archeologists in the year 100,000, sorting through rock samples and going "oh look, there's the mask pollution from the great 2020 pandemic"
- th0ma5 6y agoI think about this a lot, our footprint as seen by future anthropologists.
- thisisnico 6y agoIf we make it that far.
- maerF0x0 6y agoI've thought about it a little. If everything is digital and in deprecated formats then there could be a sort of "dark ages"... even without some kind of end of world scenario to wipe out the evidence. We could simply just forget how to access it. Eg: in yr 3030 will we still know how to open pdfs ,flash files, or say PS4 games?
- Cpoll 6y agoWe have a lot of documentation and clues, so it shouldn't be that bad. There are decades of rants about the shortcomings of the pdf format, at least :) Those formats are also more logical(ish) than human language, so reverse engineering them should be possible in some cases. Also, there will be plenty of 'rosetta stones' around: media that exists in both an obsolete format and a more recent, better understood one.
- maerF0x0 6y agoVery interesting points. Thanks for giving me food for thought
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- ObsoleteNerd 6y agoThere’s already “digital dark ages” and it’s a reason archive.org and retro tech collection is so important. From the 70s-90s most consumer tech was thrown in land fill when people were finished with it. There wasn’t yet much of a “collector” mentality because it wasn’t old enough to be cool, and there was such a mad rush to always have the newest developments in that tech-honeymoon period that people threw the old stuff out. Then for the software side, storage was expensive and complicated. People didn’t keep copies of every single old thing like lots of people do now, websites were purged of old content to fit new content, versioning in development didn’t really exist (on a large scale). I’m a retro tech/software collector and there’s plenty of stuff from my childhood that I can’t find a single trace of anymore.
- maerF0x0 6y agoI'm curious if there is an aggregation site for "lost" things? Something where people can put traces but indicate it missing? (eg an advertisement for a game that we can't find the cartridge) ?
- hh3k0 6y agoBold of you to assume that future anthropologists will do anything other than fighting in World Water War II.
- virgilp 6y ago"Why do you think people in the 20th century used to bury some women with bags of plastic on their chest? Surely some religious ritual but I found no mention of it." (silicone is not bio-degradable, right?)
- DoreenMichele 6y agoMy vague, hand-wavy recollection is that breast implants are a problem for crematories. So I'm guessing it's also not biodegradable. Edit: The 1,500-degree Fahrenheit heat of cremation will burn away all of the body's natural substances, leaving the bones to be ground up Silicone implants remain behind as a goo, while metal implants, like hip replacements, remain completely intact https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-3228354/Mortician-reveals-gory-details-happens-silicone-breast-implants-person-cremated.html https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-3228354/Mortician...
- dboreham 6y agoThe Master, Douglas Adams, already covered this: https://sites.google.com/site/h2g2theguide/Index/s/840887 https://sites.google.com/site/h2g2theguide/Index/s/840887
- simonebrunozzi 6y agoLoved this. Thanks for sharing. Big fan of DA.
- Triv888 6y agoWait and see... the 20xx pandemic will be even bigger