3 ms·

I wonder how historians of the future will look back on today's time period, knowing that we had the technology to cheaply and easily document our time period f

by Joeri 12y ago

I wonder how historians of the future will look back on today's time period, knowing that we had the technology to cheaply and easily document our time period for the future, and that we opted not to out of short-term financial interests. It may actually be harder for them to do things like construct family genealogies for today's people than for those living in the 1700's because with digital data stored in the cloud, preciously little of it will survive across the next few centuries. There should be a role here for government, to let people give digital data in permanent archival for historical purposes. But given how poorly governments are preserving their own digital data, I doubt it could actually work.

iand 12y ago
This exaggerates the problem. There is more preserved data about people than ever before, just like there was more preserved data last century than there was the previous century. There is simply vastly more data collected. I speculate that deleting 20% of this century's data would still leave an order of magnitude more data about people than was recorded last century. I think future historians will look back in the same way we do now. We're horrified that people discarded, burned or reused records from every century in history, but technology allows us to record and preserve more every year.
- _asummers 12y ago
  Jason Scott in some talk I watched of his, made the comment that we're not the ones who get to decide what stays or goes. We simply don't have the perspective. Therefore we should just keep all of it.
- mark-r 12y ago
  I think the problem is in assuming only 20% will be deleted. When you consider companies going out of business, technical obsolescence, etc. the figure will be closer to 99% after 50 years, that's my prediction.
walterbell 12y ago
Digital services could partner with printing companies to archive high-value data.
tripzilch 12y ago
> I wonder how historians of the future will look back on today's time period, knowing that we had the technology to cheaply and easily document our time period for the future, and that we opted not to out of short-term financial interests. People of the future will probably be very disappointed with us about a great many things that we could have done with our technology, knowledge and resources, but neglected or opted not to do out of short-term financial interests. But I don't think properly documenting our time period will be very high on that list. I'd love to be wrong. If in a few hundred years, there's people, society, culture and at some point again a level of civilisation and technology that allows them to dig back into the past, and the worst thing they'll have to say about our addiction to short-term financial interests is "aww, if only they had documented their time period better", then I ... well, the only likely scenario I can think of is if we also somehow manage to sell out severe-global-brain-damage-in-a-couple-of-centuries for our short-term financial interests (surely right now, there are some very smart people working on this very idea). No. This is what historians of the future will say if we would indeed meticulously document our current time period, and they could read about our day-to-day lives, important events, culture, media, etc.: "... they did WHAT?! while the planet was ... and the oceans were still ... they burned WHAT?! in order to be able to ... gosh well at least thanks to our ancestor's meticulous documenting, and millions of hours of video footage we can now theorize what these 'kittens' are supposed to have looked like ... mammals used to have hair?? ..." No, I think we better start deleting and encrypting our data. To save face. (small disclaimer: I am half-kidding, of course. While I am not particularly proud of the 'big picture' behaviour of my species in this particular era, we shouldn't actually try and hide our planetary blunders in shame, but indeed document them so that future civilisations can learn from us, and who knows, maybe one day can forgive us)

by Joeri 12y ago

iand 12y ago

This exaggerates the problem. There is more preserved data about people than ever before, just like there was more preserved data last century than there was the previous century. There is simply vastly more data collected. I speculate that deleting 20% of this century's data would still leave an order of magnitude more data about people than was recorded last century. I think future historians will look back in the same way we do now. We're horrified that people discarded, burned or reused records from every century in history, but technology allows us to record and preserve more every year.

_asummers 12y ago
Jason Scott in some talk I watched of his, made the comment that we're not the ones who get to decide what stays or goes. We simply don't have the perspective. Therefore we should just keep all of it.
mark-r 12y ago
I think the problem is in assuming only 20% will be deleted. When you consider companies going out of business, technical obsolescence, etc. the figure will be closer to 99% after 50 years, that's my prediction.

walterbell 12y ago

Digital services could partner with printing companies to archive high-value data.

tripzilch 12y ago

> I wonder how historians of the future will look back on today's time period, knowing that we had the technology to cheaply and easily document our time period for the future, and that we opted not to out of short-term financial interests. People of the future will probably be very disappointed with us about a great many things that we could have done with our technology, knowledge and resources, but neglected or opted not to do out of short-term financial interests. But I don't think properly documenting our time period will be very high on that list. I'd love to be wrong. If in a few hundred years, there's people, society, culture and at some point again a level of civilisation and technology that allows them to dig back into the past, and the worst thing they'll have to say about our addiction to short-term financial interests is "aww, if only they had documented their time period better", then I ... well, the only likely scenario I can think of is if we also somehow manage to sell out severe-global-brain-damage-in-a-couple-of-centuries for our short-term financial interests (surely right now, there are some very smart people working on this very idea). No. This is what historians of the future will say if we would indeed meticulously document our current time period, and they could read about our day-to-day lives, important events, culture, media, etc.: "... they did WHAT?! while the planet was ... and the oceans were still ... they burned WHAT?! in order to be able to ... gosh well at least thanks to our ancestor's meticulous documenting, and millions of hours of video footage we can now theorize what these 'kittens' are supposed to have looked like ... mammals used to have hair?? ..." No, I think we better start deleting and encrypting our data. To save face. (small disclaimer: I am half-kidding, of course. While I am not particularly proud of the 'big picture' behaviour of my species in this particular era, we shouldn't actually try and hide our planetary blunders in shame, but indeed document them so that future civilisations can learn from us, and who knows, maybe one day can forgive us)