10 ms·

Whenever I read a story like this, I wonder what people thousands of years from now (if there are any) will think of us.

karaterobot 2y ago
> "If we are remembered at all, it will be as the contemporaries of Herodotus and Mark Twain." — Gene Wolfe My favorite idea on the subject. This assumes that people in the future are more or less like us, which is anybody's guess.
- SamBam 2y ago
  I'm reading Stanisław Lem's Fiasco at the moment (recommended to me from here) which is a sci-fi set sometime in the far future, probably at least 2500. I'm enjoying it, but characters are constantly saying things like "imagine if people from 1950, or even 1990, saw our ships descend from the sky..." Dude, 500 years from now you think people are going to have a good idea of 1950 vs 1990?? And this is on top of other things, like every work of literature that characters reference is from the 20th c.
  - _xerces_ 2y ago
    Reminds me of reading Asimov's books set in the distant future and they still use tapes and other things from the 1950's. Maybe if pressed he could argue that the technology in the future was vastly different, but wanted to use the name of a storage media his readers were familiar with and avoid having to make up a new word.
    - scoot 2y ago
      Which is why Star Wars is set "A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away..."; things look dated now? Well of course, it was a long time ago!
  - notahacker 2y ago
    Not familiar with that particular story, but doesn't it just reflect the popular mid-late twentieth century scifi conceit that interstellar travel would start at the end of the twentieth century and be the most important thing ever? In which case the 1950/90 distinction probably would be a consideration for someone with a half decent knowledge of history, a bit like someone today saying "imagine telling someone in 1450 or even 1492 what the Americas would be like today..." Minus points for thinking the literature would stand the test of time though :)
  - ch4s3 2y ago
    > like every work of literature that characters reference is from the 20th c A lot of literature today refers to bronze age religious texts(2700 years ago), Shakespeare(400 years ago), the Ramayana(2600-3kya), Romance of the Three Kingdoms(600ya), and so on. There are threads of Porto-Indoeuropean mythology preserved in the Vedas, Roman Mythology, and the Scandinavian Sagas. I don't know much about Australian Aboriginal mythology, but there's strong evidence that their stories contain accurate details of extinct species and geographic features from thousands of years ago. So it seems entirely possible that enough cultural material from the mid 20th century will survive until the 2500s for people at that time to have a good understanding of the 1950s in at least some places.
CrzyLngPwd 2y ago
You would probably find "motel of the mysteries" a fun read :-)

karaterobot 2y ago

> "If we are remembered at all, it will be as the contemporaries of Herodotus and Mark Twain." — Gene Wolfe My favorite idea on the subject. This assumes that people in the future are more or less like us, which is anybody's guess.

SamBam 2y ago
I'm reading Stanisław Lem's Fiasco at the moment (recommended to me from here) which is a sci-fi set sometime in the far future, probably at least 2500. I'm enjoying it, but characters are constantly saying things like "imagine if people from 1950, or even 1990, saw our ships descend from the sky..." Dude, 500 years from now you think people are going to have a good idea of 1950 vs 1990?? And this is on top of other things, like every work of literature that characters reference is from the 20th c.
- _xerces_ 2y ago
  Reminds me of reading Asimov's books set in the distant future and they still use tapes and other things from the 1950's. Maybe if pressed he could argue that the technology in the future was vastly different, but wanted to use the name of a storage media his readers were familiar with and avoid having to make up a new word.
  - scoot 2y ago
    Which is why Star Wars is set "A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away..."; things look dated now? Well of course, it was a long time ago!
- notahacker 2y ago
  Not familiar with that particular story, but doesn't it just reflect the popular mid-late twentieth century scifi conceit that interstellar travel would start at the end of the twentieth century and be the most important thing ever? In which case the 1950/90 distinction probably would be a consideration for someone with a half decent knowledge of history, a bit like someone today saying "imagine telling someone in 1450 or even 1492 what the Americas would be like today..." Minus points for thinking the literature would stand the test of time though :)
- ch4s3 2y ago
  > like every work of literature that characters reference is from the 20th c A lot of literature today refers to bronze age religious texts(2700 years ago), Shakespeare(400 years ago), the Ramayana(2600-3kya), Romance of the Three Kingdoms(600ya), and so on. There are threads of Porto-Indoeuropean mythology preserved in the Vedas, Roman Mythology, and the Scandinavian Sagas. I don't know much about Australian Aboriginal mythology, but there's strong evidence that their stories contain accurate details of extinct species and geographic features from thousands of years ago. So it seems entirely possible that enough cultural material from the mid 20th century will survive until the 2500s for people at that time to have a good understanding of the 1950s in at least some places.

CrzyLngPwd 2y ago

You would probably find "motel of the mysteries" a fun read :-)