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I wonder if this tendency to simplify and turn older history into myths is going to disappear or at least change dramatically starting with, say, 2nd half of th

by simias 13y ago

I wonder if this tendency to simplify and turn older history into myths is going to disappear or at least change dramatically starting with, say, 2nd half of the 20th century. We record everything, we store everything. We have videos of everything. Cleopatra, Julius Caesar and many others became legend through the retelling and deformation of their stories. Will Barack Obama, Albert Enstein and others become legend 5 centuries from now? Will there be a funding myth of the Gods giving the internet atop of a mountain to the prophet Berners Lee? Would Cleopatra be a legend nowadays if we could browse her teenage posts and selfie shots on facebook? I think myths exist to fill the gaps in our knowledge, in this case our knowledge of what actually happened to Charlemagne and Arthur. If we had detailed and completely trustworthy accounts of what those people did on a daily basis back then, with photos and videos to prove it there would be no myth, I postulate.

markild 13y ago
I believe that a lot of myths have some truth to them, though in a varying degree. We do record a lot of data today, and it might be enough to give a (pretty) clear picture, if you sift through it all, but I don't think that necessarily is enough to prevent misinterpretations in the future. Gangnam Style has more than a billion (with a b(!)) views, and if I were a historian in the future, arguably probably a bad one, I would easily attribute a lot of value to this. You could call it some sort of selection bias. What is left behind, doesn't always represent the state of things, and if it does, things are still open to interpretation.
arethuza 13y ago
It's not even clear there was an Arthur - although he is referenced in the Y Gododdin. NB I get quite a thrill mentioning the Y Gododdin as I can look out the window from my desk and see Edinburgh Castle - the Din Eidyn where the warriors feasted and drank mead for a year before doing battle.
rmc 13y ago
I think we'll still have legends. We're recording lots of things now, but 100 years ago we were recording more things than 150 years ago. As an example, consider Churchill and Hitler. Both lived before your "2nd half of the 20th century", we don't have their blog posts, but we have a lot of information on them. Yet there is still a mythos and legendary aspect to how both are remembered now. Even with a lot of information on both, legends are forming.
smackay 13y ago
I'd say the propensity towards generating myths is going to accellerate for two reasons: first, migating all that data is not an easy task - we barely have an upgrade path for simple data such as images. As a result a lot of it is going to be lost. Secondly, we have vast amounts of data but don't have corresponding vast amounts of information or knowledge. Our inability to distil truth from all the mountain of data will ensure that myth fills in all the annoying gaps. Update: the big and important stuff is likely to remain unscathed but as we see in the thread about Malcolm Gladwell we already have instant myth making on a time period of only a few months or years.
thaumasiotes 13y ago
This tendency will not change in even the slightest way. It's not about not having the information available in the world. It's about what fits in people's heads. (It's also about the need to back up moral pronouncements with stories.) Albert Einstein may or may not be legend five centuries from now, but he's a legend today, and we've got plenty of documentation of him (including a ritually-preserved blackboard that he filled when lecturing -- he was considered a legend before he died).
- mcherm 13y ago
  But I notice that the study of "history" changed dramatically (came into existence where previously there had been no such thing) when writing made it possible to find contemporaneous records from older societies. I wonder whether ubiquitous recording and giant databases will wreak a similar change because of the degree of contemporaneous original sources, or whether it will be fairly similar to the written record we have of "history" today -- fragmented and messy enough that it is difficult but not impossible to extract a sense of the time by careful study.
vidarh 13y ago
We have present day myths, so no. Heck, we have "myths" even in any mid-sized group or company. Or even smaller ones. I work in a 15 person company that is less than 20 years old. There are arguably "myths" surrounding certain acts and people in the company's past that have arisen through retelling by people who themselves no longer work here. Some of them would have been trivially disproven by talking to the people who were there, or checking source control. But it doesn't happen; the myths keep getting retold.
Houshalter 13y ago
In five centuries from now we will be running on computers or god knows what. If anyone was still interested in history they could download it right to their brain instantly. Ok that sounds a lot more absurd than I intended, but it also seems absurd to me that in five centuries there will still be normal humans around telling oral myths.
sneak 13y ago
> If we had detailed and completely trustworthy accounts of what those people did on a daily basis back then, with photos and videos to prove it there would be no myth, I postulate. Did you hear that vaccines will give your baby autism?
po8crg 13y ago
Albert Einstein is already well on the way to being a legend.

by simias 13y ago

markild 13y ago

I believe that a lot of myths have some truth to them, though in a varying degree. We do record a lot of data today, and it might be enough to give a (pretty) clear picture, if you sift through it all, but I don't think that necessarily is enough to prevent misinterpretations in the future. Gangnam Style has more than a billion (with a b(!)) views, and if I were a historian in the future, arguably probably a bad one, I would easily attribute a lot of value to this. You could call it some sort of selection bias. What is left behind, doesn't always represent the state of things, and if it does, things are still open to interpretation.

arethuza 13y ago

It's not even clear there was an Arthur - although he is referenced in the Y Gododdin. NB I get quite a thrill mentioning the Y Gododdin as I can look out the window from my desk and see Edinburgh Castle - the Din Eidyn where the warriors feasted and drank mead for a year before doing battle.

rmc 13y ago

I think we'll still have legends. We're recording lots of things now, but 100 years ago we were recording more things than 150 years ago. As an example, consider Churchill and Hitler. Both lived before your "2nd half of the 20th century", we don't have their blog posts, but we have a lot of information on them. Yet there is still a mythos and legendary aspect to how both are remembered now. Even with a lot of information on both, legends are forming.

smackay 13y ago

I'd say the propensity towards generating myths is going to accellerate for two reasons: first, migating all that data is not an easy task - we barely have an upgrade path for simple data such as images. As a result a lot of it is going to be lost. Secondly, we have vast amounts of data but don't have corresponding vast amounts of information or knowledge. Our inability to distil truth from all the mountain of data will ensure that myth fills in all the annoying gaps. Update: the big and important stuff is likely to remain unscathed but as we see in the thread about Malcolm Gladwell we already have instant myth making on a time period of only a few months or years.

thaumasiotes 13y ago

This tendency will not change in even the slightest way. It's not about not having the information available in the world. It's about what fits in people's heads. (It's also about the need to back up moral pronouncements with stories.) Albert Einstein may or may not be legend five centuries from now, but he's a legend today, and we've got plenty of documentation of him (including a ritually-preserved blackboard that he filled when lecturing -- he was considered a legend before he died).

mcherm 13y ago
But I notice that the study of "history" changed dramatically (came into existence where previously there had been no such thing) when writing made it possible to find contemporaneous records from older societies. I wonder whether ubiquitous recording and giant databases will wreak a similar change because of the degree of contemporaneous original sources, or whether it will be fairly similar to the written record we have of "history" today -- fragmented and messy enough that it is difficult but not impossible to extract a sense of the time by careful study.

vidarh 13y ago

We have present day myths, so no. Heck, we have "myths" even in any mid-sized group or company. Or even smaller ones. I work in a 15 person company that is less than 20 years old. There are arguably "myths" surrounding certain acts and people in the company's past that have arisen through retelling by people who themselves no longer work here. Some of them would have been trivially disproven by talking to the people who were there, or checking source control. But it doesn't happen; the myths keep getting retold.

Houshalter 13y ago

In five centuries from now we will be running on computers or god knows what. If anyone was still interested in history they could download it right to their brain instantly. Ok that sounds a lot more absurd than I intended, but it also seems absurd to me that in five centuries there will still be normal humans around telling oral myths.

sneak 13y ago

> If we had detailed and completely trustworthy accounts of what those people did on a daily basis back then, with photos and videos to prove it there would be no myth, I postulate. Did you hear that vaccines will give your baby autism?

po8crg 13y ago

Albert Einstein is already well on the way to being a legend.