4 ms·

An intriguing line of thought. I think, however, the number of references to historical events is much greater now than in the past. There are 1.3M results for

An intriguing line of thought. I think, however, the number of references to historical events is much greater now than in the past. There are 1.3M results for "nuclear bomb" on Google; 120M for "nuclear". More are being added daily. Ones that die off are being replaced.

jcl 17y ago
But who is to say what those 1.3M results will mean for future readers? The article's point is that "future history" may choose to interpret the Manhattan Project as some kind of myth. There's stuff in antiquity that is mentioned a lot, yet we're not sure if it had any historical basis: Atlantis, the Great Flood, King Arthur, Prester John, etc. We're not sure if Archimedes ever built his heat ray, or if the formula for Greek fire ever contained anything special. We only just recently discovered that the Persians inadvertently used carbon nanorods to create Damascus steel, and we're still not totally sure how they did it. (Also, there is a lot of garbage on the Internet. For some unknowable reason, "moon landing" gives 3.6M results on Google, while "moon landing hoax" gives 3.9M results...)
- DanielStraight 17y ago
  Excellent points.
- ahpeeyem 17y ago
  "(Also, there is a lot of garbage on the Internet. For some unknowable reason, "moon landing" gives 3.6M results on Google, while "moon landing hoax" gives 3.9M results...)" I think that's because Google includes pages that have any of the keywords you supply, unless you tell it to do differently. Some examples: http://google.com/search?q=moon+landing+hoax http://google.com/search?q=moon+landing+hoax : about 3,190,000 http://google.com/search?q=moon+landing http://google.com/search?q=moon+landing : about 3,030,000 http://google.com/search?q=%2Bmoon+%2Blanding+%2Bhoax http://google.com/search?q=%2Bmoon+%2Blanding+%2Bhoax : about 297,000 http://google.com/search?q=%2Bmoon+%2Blanding http://google.com/search?q=%2Bmoon+%2Blanding : about 3,010,000 So there aren't more pages about the moon landing hoax than there are about the moon landing, there are just more pages that say the words moon OR landing OR hoax. Regardless of this example your point stands, there's a lot of garbage on the internet :)

jcl 17y ago

But who is to say what those 1.3M results will mean for future readers? The article's point is that "future history" may choose to interpret the Manhattan Project as some kind of myth. There's stuff in antiquity that is mentioned a lot, yet we're not sure if it had any historical basis: Atlantis, the Great Flood, King Arthur, Prester John, etc. We're not sure if Archimedes ever built his heat ray, or if the formula for Greek fire ever contained anything special. We only just recently discovered that the Persians inadvertently used carbon nanorods to create Damascus steel, and we're still not totally sure how they did it. (Also, there is a lot of garbage on the Internet. For some unknowable reason, "moon landing" gives 3.6M results on Google, while "moon landing hoax" gives 3.9M results...)

DanielStraight 17y ago
Excellent points.
ahpeeyem 17y ago
"(Also, there is a lot of garbage on the Internet. For some unknowable reason, "moon landing" gives 3.6M results on Google, while "moon landing hoax" gives 3.9M results...)" I think that's because Google includes pages that have any of the keywords you supply, unless you tell it to do differently. Some examples: http://google.com/search?q=moon+landing+hoax http://google.com/search?q=moon+landing+hoax : about 3,190,000 http://google.com/search?q=moon+landing http://google.com/search?q=moon+landing : about 3,030,000 http://google.com/search?q=%2Bmoon+%2Blanding+%2Bhoax http://google.com/search?q=%2Bmoon+%2Blanding+%2Bhoax : about 297,000 http://google.com/search?q=%2Bmoon+%2Blanding http://google.com/search?q=%2Bmoon+%2Blanding : about 3,010,000 So there aren't more pages about the moon landing hoax than there are about the moon landing, there are just more pages that say the words moon OR landing OR hoax. Regardless of this example your point stands, there's a lot of garbage on the internet :)