3 ms·
Indeed this is one of the things I most enjoyed when I first visited DC, the realization of just how recent these historical events really were. Standing on a
by rootusrootus 6mo ago
Indeed this is one of the things I most enjoyed when I first visited DC, the realization of just how recent these historical events really were. Standing on a battlefield in Gettysburg and thinking "This all happened in the 1860s, barely more than 100 years before I was born. I have relatives who lived in this area at that time, and only a few generations back."
When I talk to young people today, and realize how little they know about people and events that were major news when I was young, I understand how it happens. Even for me WW2 is just something from the history books, and yet it concluded just ~30 years before I was born. 30 years before today was 1996.
Our descendants are going to enjoy an enormous wealth of imagery and videos for events that will to them otherwise be just something from a history book. Just imagine what it would be like today if we could see videos of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, etc. Might knock the mythology down a peg or two, though.
- lukan 6mo ago"Our descendants are going to enjoy an enormous wealth of imagery and videos for events that will to them otherwise be just something from a history book. " The question will be at some point, will they be able to tell it apart from AI generated fake ones? (and will they care?) Already now youtube recommends me some obvious AI generated garbage as WW2 documentations. And that was just garbage generated for attention (ad money). Once big actors with money want to rewrite history and flood the web with fake images to spread certain narratives, then new challenges will arise. I hope enough people still care about facts and guard them.
- cucumber3732842 6mo agoIt's the "if you think the news is all lies, bullshit and agendas you should see the history books" meme. Lord knows what falsehoods of today will become the official record of tomorrow never mind what lies of the past we just repeat because they're what got written down.
- cindyllm 6mo ago[dead]
- rootusrootus 6mo agoThat's a good point. When I wrote my comment only my optimistic side was engaged ;-). The pessimistic side shares your concerns. I hope that we develop some technologically diffult-to-overcome solutions for preserving the integrity of media. Like methods for cryptographically signing raw content from a digital camera that guarantees it was produced by that hardware. Not a panacea, but a step in the right direction I think.
- ButlerianJihad 6mo agoDigital Data https://m.xkcd.com/1683/ https://m.xkcd.com/1683/