6 ms·

The thought of future archaeologists being thoroughly confused by Roman terracotta tiles that apparently generates electricity amuses me.

by yen223 4y ago

selcuka 4y ago
Future archaeologists will probably have access to the HackerNews archive. Archaeology is not as fun in the future as it is today.
- roarcher 4y ago
  I have often thought of how strange it would be to watch HD video of ancient people like the Romans, and wonder what that experience will be like for future archaeologists. Assuming any of this survives the next few thousand years.
- dhosek 4y ago
  Nah, in the event of societal collapse, pretty much all digital information storage will likely be lost forever. Even without societal collapse, a lot of digital information storage is likely lost forever. As near as I can tell, some of the software that I released into the public domain (when open source was still very much a niche thing) in the 80s has vanished completely. I’d kind of like to find my VMS¹ and CMS² software for the TeX ecosystem, if only to revisit my younger self. ⸻ 1. I did some nice integration of TeX and friends into the VMS CLI setup so that, e.g., one could access iniTeX by doing TEX/INIT or set a number of parameters via command line prompts. 2. I completed ports of some of the fringe TeX-related apps like MFT and also wrote a DVI previewer which could display a preview of TeX output for people connected to their VM/CMS system via the Kermit terminal software which supported Tektronics graphics. A developer in Germany contributed GDDM support for IBM’s graphics terminals.
  - mcronce 4y ago
    You mean in 500 years, nobody's going to dig up the server rack in my house and figure out how to rig the Ceph cluster back up?
    - maximus-decimus 4y ago
      That server rack clearly the the Rosetta Stone of the future. It is the key to the understanding of all our current jargon.
      - mcronce 4y ago
        It does contain many, many memes, which - along with emojis - are the hieroglyphs of our time. There are certainly worse legacies I could leave.
maxwell 4y ago
Sufficiently advanced civilizations seem likely to integrate energy generation technology to the point of invisibility, optimizing for aesthetics and potentially going classical and opting for something that looks like ancient Rome or Egypt. It seems unlikely that the pyramids were power plants and obelisks energy receivers [1], but maybe power plants of the future will look like the pyramids and energy receivers like obelisks. The pyramids seem to have been built in the 26th century BCE rather than 100th, but an advanced ur-civilization may have developed the means and will that "they actually got out with whisk brooms, scoop shovels and little spoons and cleared out every single trace of their daily lives, their utensils, their pottery, their wood, their tools and so on" [2]. 1. https://medium.com/understanding-reality/were-the-pyramids-power-plants-95fd2ebaf7af https://medium.com/understanding-reality/were-the-pyramids-p... 2. https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/pyramid/explore/howold2.html https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/pyramid/explore/howold2.html
- kevincox 4y ago
  Terracotta tiles were probably more about practicality than astestics as well. There is a good chance that we only find it astetically pleasing because we associate it with historical architecture. If that had been shiny black surfaces we may have thought that modern solar panels look beautiful and antique. Don't get me wrong, I think it is great to have more choice in what solar panels look like and I think preserving the appearance of historical architecture is important. But I don't think that one is fundamentally more astetically pleasing than the other. It also makes the idea "integrated to the point of invisibility" an interesting concept. What is invisible? Most of our current building are founded in practically with astestic choices a minor customization on top.
- midoridensha 4y ago
  >but maybe power plants of the future will look like the pyramids and energy receivers like obelisks. Unless people in the future become religious nuts even worse than today's, I don't see why they'd waste so much space and resources on power-generating burial mounds. The pyramids may be impressive for a primitive civilization to build, but they were functionally completely useless and just a collosal waste of manpower, materials, and space. This is quite unlike solar-power-collecting terra cotta roof tiles: roofs serve a real purpose, on buildings that people live and work in.
Cthulhu_ 4y ago
In theory they would be able to determine they were a much later addition. Then again, things like ancient Egypt lasted for thousands of years, so perhaps they will consider 2000 years a short amount of time. That said, it does feel like the past few centuries (since the Industrial Revolution, but even moreso since the late 1800s/early 1900s) have seen incredible avancement in technology, unlike anything seen before. I mean electricity as we know it - the means to reliably generate and use it - have only been around for just over 200 years now.

The thought of future archaeologists being thoroughly confused by Roman terracotta tiles that apparently generates electricity amuses me.

by yen223 4y ago

The thought of future archaeologists being thoroughly confused by Roman terracotta tiles that apparently generates electricity amuses me.

selcuka 4y ago

Future archaeologists will probably have access to the HackerNews archive. Archaeology is not as fun in the future as it is today.

roarcher 4y ago
I have often thought of how strange it would be to watch HD video of ancient people like the Romans, and wonder what that experience will be like for future archaeologists. Assuming any of this survives the next few thousand years.
dhosek 4y ago
Nah, in the event of societal collapse, pretty much all digital information storage will likely be lost forever. Even without societal collapse, a lot of digital information storage is likely lost forever. As near as I can tell, some of the software that I released into the public domain (when open source was still very much a niche thing) in the 80s has vanished completely. I’d kind of like to find my VMS¹ and CMS² software for the TeX ecosystem, if only to revisit my younger self. ⸻ 1. I did some nice integration of TeX and friends into the VMS CLI setup so that, e.g., one could access iniTeX by doing TEX/INIT or set a number of parameters via command line prompts. 2. I completed ports of some of the fringe TeX-related apps like MFT and also wrote a DVI previewer which could display a preview of TeX output for people connected to their VM/CMS system via the Kermit terminal software which supported Tektronics graphics. A developer in Germany contributed GDDM support for IBM’s graphics terminals.
- mcronce 4y ago
  You mean in 500 years, nobody's going to dig up the server rack in my house and figure out how to rig the Ceph cluster back up?
  - maximus-decimus 4y ago
    That server rack clearly the the Rosetta Stone of the future. It is the key to the understanding of all our current jargon.
    - mcronce 4y ago
      It does contain many, many memes, which - along with emojis - are the hieroglyphs of our time. There are certainly worse legacies I could leave.

maxwell 4y ago

Sufficiently advanced civilizations seem likely to integrate energy generation technology to the point of invisibility, optimizing for aesthetics and potentially going classical and opting for something that looks like ancient Rome or Egypt. It seems unlikely that the pyramids were power plants and obelisks energy receivers [1], but maybe power plants of the future will look like the pyramids and energy receivers like obelisks. The pyramids seem to have been built in the 26th century BCE rather than 100th, but an advanced ur-civilization may have developed the means and will that "they actually got out with whisk brooms, scoop shovels and little spoons and cleared out every single trace of their daily lives, their utensils, their pottery, their wood, their tools and so on" [2]. 1. https://medium.com/understanding-reality/were-the-pyramids-power-plants-95fd2ebaf7af https://medium.com/understanding-reality/were-the-pyramids-p... 2. https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/pyramid/explore/howold2.html https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/pyramid/explore/howold2.html

kevincox 4y ago
Terracotta tiles were probably more about practicality than astestics as well. There is a good chance that we only find it astetically pleasing because we associate it with historical architecture. If that had been shiny black surfaces we may have thought that modern solar panels look beautiful and antique. Don't get me wrong, I think it is great to have more choice in what solar panels look like and I think preserving the appearance of historical architecture is important. But I don't think that one is fundamentally more astetically pleasing than the other. It also makes the idea "integrated to the point of invisibility" an interesting concept. What is invisible? Most of our current building are founded in practically with astestic choices a minor customization on top.
midoridensha 4y ago
>but maybe power plants of the future will look like the pyramids and energy receivers like obelisks. Unless people in the future become religious nuts even worse than today's, I don't see why they'd waste so much space and resources on power-generating burial mounds. The pyramids may be impressive for a primitive civilization to build, but they were functionally completely useless and just a collosal waste of manpower, materials, and space. This is quite unlike solar-power-collecting terra cotta roof tiles: roofs serve a real purpose, on buildings that people live and work in.

Cthulhu_ 4y ago

In theory they would be able to determine they were a much later addition. Then again, things like ancient Egypt lasted for thousands of years, so perhaps they will consider 2000 years a short amount of time. That said, it does feel like the past few centuries (since the Industrial Revolution, but even moreso since the late 1800s/early 1900s) have seen incredible avancement in technology, unlike anything seen before. I mean electricity as we know it - the means to reliably generate and use it - have only been around for just over 200 years now.