Tribulus

Caltrops on the Conversational Highway

Bigend: How do you think we look? To the future, I mean.

Helena: I think they’ll hate us.

Cayce: I don’t think they’ll remember us anymore than we remember the Victorians. Not the individual souls anyway, maybe the icons.

Well that’s just great; I guess some of us look like imbecilic, war mongering chimps.
We can’t even choose how the future sees us anymore like in the past days of informational control because there are too many information retaining devices for us to edit our future history. (Or is that why we're fighting for Net Neautrality) But then, maybe that is a good thing; it makes the picture too blurry for the future to even make out our image.

How do you think we look?

That leads me to the question: Who is 'we'?

Perhaps we should at first try to define ourselves.

How does the old Egyptians look to us?

Does this history make me look fat?

quote:

Originally posted by TwiliteMinotaur:
Does this history make me look fat?

Terrible...yet I smiled.

Posterity can kiss my arse.

*thinks*

... to coin a phrase.

---

Seriously though, the excess of recording media may allow for more nuanced understanding of the present by future historians - which will probably shit them because historians do like to define an epoch and a diversity of conflicting sources can really stuff you around on that score. It will however mean our descendents won't have to guess what ordinary people (above a certain class) were thinking from the scraps of documents left by a tiny literate elite. Which will definitely spoil the fun of those who enjoy revisionism.

Archaeologically speaking, we'll probably be invisible. Paper doesn't last; digital media is notoriously brittle. Personally I think a useful legacy to the future would be a resilient diagrammatic explanation (say etched onto stainless steel and buried) as to how to make something that will read our compact discs. But, given the plethora of related software, even that would probably be pointless. They sure as hell won't have a Rosetta Stone to work with.

quote:

Originally posted by Rob W.:
Archaeologically speaking, we'll probably be invisible. Paper doesn't last; digital media is notoriously brittle.

Ah, but Plastic is Forever™.
But yes, it's ironic that, while today every one with net access, from teens to scientists, has a blog detailing their lives, work, thoughts and cultural surroundings, complete with photos and videos, all that data can be wiped out with a little EMP. Or rendered inaccesible by market-driven technology advances.

quote:

They sure as hell won't have a Rosetta Stone to work with.

'Well, they might have been a bunch of jackasses, but had an eye for design...' : (

Computer Graveyard

I think the future will look back and laugh.

quote:

Plastic is Forever

Hmmmm...

quote:

I don’t think they’ll remember us anymore than we remember the Victorians. Not the individual souls anyway, maybe the icons.

Anyone else think the modern day intelligentsia are dumber than the historical average - or is that just a false impression gained from judging by the public intellectuals most lionised and/or most powerful? I'm continually amazed at the monumentally stupid ideas championed by mainstream intellectual culture - the "end of history", the "clash of civilisations", the "third way", the "liberal media". You could blame the democratisation of the life of the mind if you like; I don't myself, except insofar as the threat of democracy seems to have driven large sections of the elites into devoting their intellects to subverting it, leaving less time for actual thinking. Neo-Straussianism can sure fuck up a perfectly good brain. My instinct is to assume that there's nothing special, good or bad, about the current epoch (nothing that can't be simply explained by "better killing through technology", at any rate). I guess the brainiacs of the past were just as likely to pursue stupid ideas, and maybe it's always been the case that wherever the really smart people might be, they sure aren't runnin' t'ings. And perhaps I have unreal expectations of the intelligence of pundits and political advisors. But still - man, there's some stupid but influential people out there!

quote:

Anyone else think the modern day intelligentsia are dumber than the historical average

Looking at local specimen like Bernard-Henri Levy, I can only concur.

We have to remember that usually being remembered by the preceding generations has traditionally had little to do with your current status as intellectual.

I would dare to say that fortunately it is more likely the 22nd century will be interested in Pynchon rather than Oprah.

Or who knows the name of any British romantics that were not exiled from society, outside a Literature department?

How we are remembered will depend on how the next phase comes, whether peacefully or violently, in resource shortage or with technological prestidigitation solving current problems. After all, most people just focus on the beginnings and the endings. If the beginning (in my opinion) of the current culture is Hiroshima (with our current subset started alternatively with Gorbachev in TV or your choice of a game console or a hand-held mobile phone), we have the interesting starting point covered.

When will we be aware the world has really changed, and we are in the next phase?

José

I think it becomes ever more difficult to condense any sort of all encompassing ethos for any given time the further forward in the human timeline you move. "The End of History" is hyperbolic maybe, but I see a degree of resonance in the 21st century with this theme. It seems to me not so much the end of history but this movement towards complete homogenization and regurgitation of culture and human existence which has largely been a product of two things, both essentially technology driven. One is the evolution of the corporation (namely media and marketing), and the other is this sense of simultaneous terror, soul-overload, and utter boredom with the banality of much of our current life.

There has always been propaganda and ideology. Television has been around since the 50s, mainstream assimilation of the marginal (punk, jeans) has been heavy since at least the 80s. But this complete, cultural terra-forming, this Wal-Martization of the entire world, the profit maximizing singularism and synergism between the American McIdol, the summer McBlockbuster the McX-Box smash etc.. etc... is unique and emblematic of the late 90's, 00's - the homogenization. And American Idol is anthemic of the regurgitation; the music of the 00s is largely karaoke that people vote for, the Zeitgeist is Shang Tsung. On one level, what we are doing is taking history, airbrushing it, rendering it with sub-surface scattering, soft body physics and realistic mo-cap, and calling it the present.

The new direction it seems to me is the multinational simulation of the local, the alternative, and the avante-garde. Instead of buying you out and assimilating you completely into Wal-Mart or EA Games, they just buy you out but let you keep the mom-and-pop store name, have a little EA Games splash screen and sticker in the corner of the box while running your show. It's better'n nothing I guess.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: TwiliteMinotaur,

quote:

JRE sayeth: When will we be aware the world has really changed, and we are in the next phase?

This is kind of like ArkanGL's temporal illusion experiment and Newt Gringrich's WWIII tulpa language trick. There used to be such a long delay before ideas became reality. We are still adjusted to that delay but the delay has been decreased so we think we're hearing the notes before they are played. In Gingrich's trick, we think WWIII is happening before the triggers are pulled.

Honestly, I think the impression that history is ending and everything is the same everywhere only holds if you don't leave "The West". It's true that the mirror worlds are converging, but there's still plenty of weird out there.

quote:

Originally posted by Rob W.:
Archaeologically speaking, we'll probably be invisible. Paper doesn't last; digital media is notoriously brittle. Personally I think a useful legacy to the future would be a resilient diagrammatic explanation (say etched onto stainless steel and buried) as to how to make something that will read our compact discs. But, given the plethora of related software, even that would probably be pointless. They sure as hell won't have a Rosetta Stone to work with.

I felt this strange calling to this thread...

Actually, it's very tough to guess what'll
survive and what won't. Sure, not everything is
going to survive, but some things we wouldn't
expect might slip through. The other thing to
consider what sort of future we're talking
about. How many years? Will there be a total
division from the current civilization (large
scale depopulation with a near-total loss of
previous lifeways and technology) or will it
just be a reorganization of the political and
cultural structures. It's all very tough to say.

quote:

Originally posted by TwiliteMinotaur:
"The End of History" is hyperbolic maybe, but I see a degree of resonance in the 21st century with this theme. It seems to me not so much the end of history but this movement towards complete homogenization and regurgitation of culture and human existence which has largely been a product of two things, both essentially technology driven.

I think globalization, especially at the speed
and bandwidth that we've attained, does cause a
sort of cultural entropy. It's certainly not
complete and there will always probably be a few
holdouts, but if the globalization keeps up it
will continue.

Cries against foreign countries influencing national "character" have always existed. As well as a continuous speeding up of the history (at least from the XVIIth century). Considering the speed of information these days, that is to be expected.

Just as long as what survives of our time is not decided by the winners of a global war, who will choose what is copied into new media and what will depend on archeological means to be found.

Still, there is not a global rate of change. I, in Europe, may consider milestones that are not so in America, and for sure will not be so in China. And I am thankful for it.

José

quote:

Originally posted by Marshdrifter:
I think globalization, especially at the speed
and bandwidth that we've attained, does cause a
sort of cultural entropy. It's certainly not
complete and there will always probably be a few
holdouts, but if the globalization keeps up it
will continue.

Yes, the whole homogenization bit is by no means a holistic complete picture and there certainly have always been the WGBers and weird interesting stuff going on. It will just be one of the themes that I think will be remembered (perhaps one of those bits of history people will try not to repeat).

God forbid if we repeat this debacle...

quote:

"The End of History" is hyperbolic maybe, but I see a degree of resonance in the 21st century with this theme. It seems to me not so much the end of history but this movement towards complete homogenization and regurgitation of culture and human existence which has largely been a product of two things, both essentially technology driven.

In that sense I have no problem with the notion of the end of history (the monumentally stupid idea I was referring to was Fukuyama's retrofitting of Hegel). It seems to me an important part of that theme, more so than cultural imperialism, is the inertial effect of our over-recorded recent past. When the past was a foreign country it was alien - and one was therefore able to be turn away from it in pursuit of the new - as a result of a similar lack of access to cultural artifacts. Now the past is easlily accessed in pristine detail, much as foreign lands can be.

On the other hand, you'd think a detailed record of what artists and performers were doing in the previous decade would allow you to avoid repeating the same tropes and styles. That seems to happen in some areas of the arts. Doesn't happen in politics, of course. Doesn't seem to happen as much as it should in music - I wonder why.