Well, do you remember anyone from 1425 or even 1625?
Wikipedia does.
Tbf, they didn’t have mass surveillance back then.
If the data doesn’t get lost, someone could find an average human in a developed country born in the 21st century, and could know what their entire life is like.
The vast, vast majority of people are forgotten within 100 years. Pretty much need to be in an extremely high position where records are kept, like presidents, or do something extraordinarily positive or negative.
I strongly doubt anyone reading this post will be remembered after the people they met or interacted with directly have died.
With the U.S. only being 250 years old, I can’t say anyone would remember presidents in 600 years. If the U.S. is gone there will likely be mention of 1 president that was in power when whatever came and took/changed it. During the planetary destruction revolution there was a plethora of wasteful greed. They called it an industrial revolution that ran rampant with greed and wastefulness.
History preserved the names of heads of state from countries that had a much shorter existence or impact. 600 years might seem a long time to Americans but it’s not that long for historical memory.
Sure, then everything in history would be “remembered” forever… Except no one would know or care. To me, that is not remembered.
I would say Jesus is forgotten completely at this point even though he is written/read everywhere
While that’s true, we have much more extensive record keeping these days. I’ve been researching my family tree, and 100 years ago there were still a decent number of people who were mostly illiterate. Add to that documents like the census being handwritten in cursive on paper, and you get lots of errors being recorded, and the records themselves being damaged by age.
Unless something drastic happens, a lot of our records will still exist in the centuries to come. It will mostly be our official records, but they should still be there :)
Is a name in a list really being remembered though?
It’s not just names in lists though. Using my mother’s grandparents as examples, I know where they were born and grew up, I know who they lived with at multiple points in their lives, and I know a few of the places where they lived.
I know where and when they got married, and some of the guests, and I know what children they had and when. As they were adults at the time, I know some of what my great grandfather was doing during the first World War and how he died.
I haven’t done a deep dive into their lives yet as I’ve been working backwards, but I’ve already got a decent idea about who they were and what they were like. I know a fair bit about his parents and family too, as I checked that side first.
The biggest issues are finding photos, and the cost and availability of records. There are not many photos due to them not being as pervasive at the time, and there are not many records because a lot of things either weren’t recorded or weren’t saved. Both of those can be solved with the technology we have now. Lots of people have their own information saved, separate to the official sources, and it’s easier to have multiple copies of everything, so they won’t get lost or destroyed as easily.
Hopefully this means that we’ll remember more of the past going forwards :)
Or be a really shitty copper merchant
Yeah, weird random chance makes a huge difference. Otzi was probably well known, but only hype-regionally. Lucy was basically just an unusually smart animal, and that was millions of years ago.
And just because you’re forgotten for a bit doesn’t mean you won’t come back into style.
Hmm. So if you want 15 minutes of fame a long time from now, what’s some weird easter egg you can leave?
Buttplug
Archeologists actually dig up a lot of sex toys, believe it or not. That won’t get you noticed.
A time capsule with something that nobody else will think to preserve might do it. Way too many preserve things the future is actually meh about. I actually wonder if a weird data footprint might be even better at this point. Like, if you filled out some official form thousands of times just for fun.
What sort of forms about buttplugs do we have?
I actually have a geneology book （族谱） from my paternal lineage (everybody does this in China). Its just a bunch of names, and some history of the village summarized. I hate tradition and I’m already in the US right now, I dont give a shit about the stupid geneology book anymore, my ancesters will probably be so pisses to find out that I totally ignored all the hard efforts lol. (My village still has a copy, but I’m not adding more name to the stupid thing, a waste of time, its also misogynistic AF, if there’s a daugher, then the lineage doesn’t record their decendents. So dumb, as I guy, I hate this patriarchal bullshit)
Some aspects of that tradition are commendable, though. It would be neat to see this updated in a less male-centric fashion.
Tradition is just peer pressure from dead people.
Tradition is just narcissists convincing you to do things their way because change is ✨scary✨
That’s quite sad tbh, we’re all just tiny specks on the timeline of humans
It’s your’s to make of it what you will. It doesn’t have to be sad. It’s pretty incredible any of us are here in the first place with how many conditions had to be present for life to even be on earth. And then we evolved from single cell organisms into these complex beings that we are today. It’s pretty fucking nuts and fascinating.
Yeah, it is incredibly fascinating.
Perhaps but what is the value of human life? Being remembered of living and enjoying life? You won’t be around to care that no one remembers you, but you are here to enjoy life right now. So why be bothered by what people in 600 years are up to.
Im glad you replied what I was going to reply… just in a way more positive way :D
Fair point! We’re here to enjoy life now.
I’m still alive and I’m already forgotten. 👌
No, but AIs will be able to generate a statistically accurate simulacrum of us.
Do you think that’s important?
Depend depends upon the reason That they’re being remembered. For example of someone who came up the cure for cancer you would hope they’d be remembered.
I’d rather the cure be remembered than that name of who discovered it.
Why can’t it be both?
Why does it need to be one or the other?
Trust me if someone finds the cure for cancer, the cure will still be around in 200 years.
Gods no. Who would want to know about me in the future?
To be fair I don’t remember anyone from 600 years in the future.
I don’t think humanity is going to make it another 600 years tbh
I think humans might, but we won’t have fancy skyscrapers, we’ll be living in bunkers hiding from whatever disaster (war, plague, radiation, alien invasion) is on the surface.
I find it odd that natural disaster isn’t on your list considering it’s by far the most realistic scenario. Hell, it’s already happening.
I guess the word “natural” isn’t very accurate for a climate disaster, but still, it’s not on your list.
Technically, climate change by itself isn’t what will destroy civilization, its the aftermath, mainly, the crops wouldn’t be able to grow properly in a fucked up temperaure, weather, ecosystem…
Similar to “old age” in humans, nobody “dies of old age” in of itself, rather, its the complications that result from old age.
We sure are a dumb species. We’re able to construct all this stuff using the world around us but we can’t seems to figure out working together instead of constantly competing
It all started in Eden with that fruit.
An alien invasion couldn’t possibly make things worse.
History from this period will feast or famine. If the Internet Archive is preserved long term, then your words on the Internet will be there. If not, then bitrot will happen within decades.
The feast result will be an interesting one for historians. We don’t usually have historical records about common people of any era more than a century or two back. “History is written by the victors” isn’t quite right. History is written by writers, and for most of history, those would be educated upper class people.
Historians love finding Roman graffiti, even when it’s about some guy’s giant cock. So yes, they’ll be interested in your memes, too.
Nope
I read books from people that died centuries or even millennia ago (ok in their case, their writings are not technically speaking books, but you get the idea). So, a few of us could be remembered as well.
Alas, there is a difference in our days and age: all our creations, text, images and sound, are digital. There is hardly any hardcopy anymore. And I doubt much if any of most of our ‘dematerialized’ content and even worse our cloud stored/streamed content will survive long after the last person stops paying the monthly fee. And even for those that don’t are not cloud -stored, I doubt much will survive more than a few years after we have passed. Digital doesn’t decay well.
For those future human beings, if there are any left to study our times, we could as well be known as the ‘voiceless trash age’, without much artifacts left beside a planet filled with waste and plastic craps. Oh, and piles and piles of dead smartphones, too.
Doesn’t even take that long. My parent passed away and left boxes of pictures from 50 to 75 years ago and no one recognizes. Why did they have these pictures and boxes of them? No notes. Nothing.
As they say in preservation, metadata is key.
“It’s my estimation that every man ever got a statue made of him was one kind of sommbitch or another.”
No one needs to remember me except my kids. Maybe my grandkids.
“JAYNE, the man they call Jayne.”
Too late, thanks to big tech, your grandkids will know what type of porn you watch.
Yeah, and they’ll like it, whether they like it or not!
There was a pic of my great-great-grandparents on the wall. No idea what their name was.
Brave of you to assume that humanity will exist in 600 years.
Actually, we might be, but the better-off ones will be back at sticks and stones and huddling around wood fires and the like.
I really doubt this. Humanity is really good at surviving things.
My prediction - at a certain point, we gain the ability to port human brains to computers. The most wealthy gain this tech first, and effectively become immortal. Using their wealth (which is likely always accumulating) they are able to afford lots of redundency and good tech + energy to function at extremely high levels of performance - essentially making them immortal gods. I assume they will form alliances and rivalries, and stake out ground based on the now-general-intelligence AIs they have created.
Most people who choose transhumanism after this will need to utilize their afterlife continuing to work in order to pay for the ongoing cost of running their servers.
Meanwhile, humans still made of meat will have started conducting experiments on their genetics. Initially this will be about simply reducing or removing the chance of carrying a genetic disease. But soon they will start working on how to generally be better than others - improved cognitive abilities; sexier, stronger bodies; improved emotional regulation. Not long after, it will start being considered irresponsible to have children without the standard genetic modifications that the middle class can afford. Permanent class stratifications will be etched into dna. Even further along, the rich take genetic modification into fashion, creating physical markers of class stratification which will gradually make them look less human. As genetic class differences widen, there will be increasing class wars - in each one, the upper classes and those aligned with them will eliminate more and more of the lower classes. Slavery will also make a comeback, as those without genetic modifications (or with sufficiently lesser modifications) will be deemed too irresponsible to manage their own affairs and function in society. The descendents of the ultra-rich transhumanist gods, who will have the best and most fashionable genetic modifications, will be the first to achieve immortality in the flesh. But there will probably develop a sort of cultural expectation that they eventually give up their flesh and become transhumans like their anscestors.
Therefore, I will not have children unless I earn enough to afford their genetic modifications. To do otherwise would be irresponsible.
Is that even human tho?
Like the scientist who invented it will say its human, but from an ontology perspective, you can’t ever be sure about that. That could just be killing you and copying your brain.
No way in hell I’m gonna “upload” my brain. It’s suicide. Star trek teleporters are murder machines.
Why not? It has the thoughts, feelings, memories, and personality of a human. What else is a human? A physical body? Does, then, losong one’s leg male one less human?
Isn’t this the plot of Schismatrix by Bruce Sterling, the rich Mechanists that extend their life through machines vs the Shapers who rely on genetic modifications. Love, Death and Robots adapted a few short stories from this books universe that were very good
No idea, never heard of it. It just seems obvious to me with the way tech is going.
You never know, look at Ea Nasir.
Copper is so reusable, any of you could be currently affected by the poor quality
