Whenever I show kids pictures of people from 100 years ago, they always say something along the lines of “MAN, look at those old timey clothes! How could they wear that stuff?!”. Similar reactions occur when they read stuff written a long time ago and they say “Man, how could people talk like that?!”. I always point out that in 200 years, people will look back at THEM and say “Wow, look at those old timey clothes and listen to the weird, old timey / old english way that they talk! It’s so bizarre!” This always blows their minds and they say something like “Yeah, but I’m just wearing NORMAL clothes and talking normally!” I have to point out to them that it’s only “normal” for their time and place.
What are some things from today that you think that people in the future might look back on and say “Wow, the past was so weird!”?
This can include clothing, speech patterns, popularly held ideas, pop culture, politics, culture in general, pretty much anything…It can be 10 years in the future, 100, or 1,000 years. I realize the topic is vast and, since I won’t let you use my time machine until last tuesday again, completely subjective. Obviously we don’t know what the future will consider absurd about our cultures or what will still be around, but I’m interested to hear your take or any funny replies.
My current frame of reference is 21st century United States (northeast).
For instance:
“Wow, it’s so weird how all the kids back then used to all wear those ‘jeans’ pants! Why would would they all want to wear BLUE pants?” “Why did all the men in the west all have to wear those weird rope things (ties) around their necks for formal wear. Didn’t anyone point out how silly and pointless it was?”
“Why did people always say ‘cool’ / ‘holy shit’? Those sound so old timey and make no sense!?” (ok, that one sucks, but you get the idea)
Year 2300: “It says in this study that 90% of people in the United States around the year 2000 believed that there was literally an invisible devil going around tempting people. Is this true? Or am I taking this out of context?”
“I can’t believe its not 100%! Who were the crazy 10% who hadn’t seen THE PRINCE yet?”
“Well Johnny, that’s because THE UNVEILING occurred in 2263 and hadn’t happened yet”
I totally agree about ties!! I actually think a man in a tie is kind of hot, but what a weird thing it is, if you think about it. I can see that seeming very strange and old fashioned in a few hundred years.
I think Cecil did a column about ties once, which I can’t seem to find. I remember reading the history of them at one point. At any rate, yeah, it is weird. I often imagine what it would be like to explain things to an alien or someone from the past following me around on my daily life as a fun little mental exercise, mainly to explain things to myself
(Upon drinking black coffee brewed for the first time in 1000 years)
“Ewww, so this is what ‘coffee’ is like? Was is really so ubiquitous in the past that in some western cities there were places right across the street selling it?”
“Yup, it was an ancient custom in the west and middle east. Millions of people drank it every day. Many put cream and sugar in to mask the taste. Some even drank it without the caffeine!”
I’m guessing people will wonder why we wore watches. You’ll have to pry my watch off of my cold, dead wrist but it seems that most people don’t use them anymore and, in 50 years or less, will consider them antiquated and wonder why we ever wore them.
Yeah, true about the watches. Maybe you could hold on to your watch if you have a nice one and make it into a family heirloom. In the future it could be analogous to a nice 18th century pocket watch today
Also, baseball caps will probably look silly and old timey once the newest trend for head gear in the west comes about. I find hats and head wear in particular really tend to point out what age a person comes from (in the west)
Also, language / grammar might hold some good examples. I’ve read that languages tend to get less complex and simplify as they mature. Kids always find it hard to believe that anyone could remember in their head to spontaneously follow all the rules of classical Latin / Greek grammar and use all the correct forms. I point out that the average person didn’t always, and people made all kinds of mistakes, just like we do. Also, that English has all kinds of irregular forms and rules and stuff that native speakers generally just say naturally.
The idea of changing a verb depending on the person is sometimes hard to grasp for first year 14 year old native English speakers, but English still does this to some degree anyways…maybe people will say
"Wow, how could they remember that it’s:
‘I AM’, ‘you ARE’, ‘he/she/it IS’, but sometimes ‘The principal demanded that John BE in his office right away’? etc
Perhaps the idea that one has to use a keyboard and mouse to interact with a computer? (That’s assuming that people move to voice input for computers.) Possibly the idea that one has to drive one’s self around, rather than letting the car drive itself.
The one I always find myself musing about is cords / wires. Electrical components, stereo components, speaker wires, cable, phone jacks, computer components, telephone wires, etc.
I imagine there will come a time where everyone will laugh at our lack of a central home power source / media delivery system.
Very true, when cleaning out my Dad’s dresser drawers after he died we found a little box with 3 very lovely antique pocket watches in it. Apparently it was from his father and grandfather, and one watch he got given when graduating high school [going by the inscriptions on them.]
Beautiful things, but they really need a vest pocket to carry them - schlubbing them into a pocket with other stuff in it is just asking for scratches and possibly breaking the crystal. We are dividing them up, my brother gets one, mrAru gets one and I will get one. We just have to sit down and figure out who gets which. They are all worth about the same, so it will come down to going by appearance we think =) I am going to have a special cloth lined pouch for mine so I can carry it in my purse.
My suggestion for baffling the people in the future -
How can people keep eating all the foods that are bad for them - why didn’t they just learn to cook and avoid all the junk foods with all the preservatives, artificial flavors and colors. Didn’t they realize they were negatively affecting their health?
Then they would pay money for worthless fake pills and products to help them lose all that weight, instead of just eating properly and exercising the right amount. Didn’t they realize that proper diet and exercise would go further in keeping them healthy?
They will look back at the brief period in history when we tooled about in self-propelled motorized buggies and wonder what happened to all the horses for this span.
Very true. When we get our home built, we want to make the whole place unified - network, video, audio, fiber optics. I have a friend who is specializing in computer systems and has offered as a housewarming present to design the whole home automation for us.
I can’t wait to see what it will be [we are talking about 5 or so years from now] with a computer taking care of the house. I know there have been the occasional horror movie about it, but I think home automation is cool, ever since I found an article about it online scanned in from a magazine. The living room was focused around ‘the electronic hearth’ essentially interactive digital tv/video communications/email and the kitchen had the pantry and fridge auto ordering supplies as they got used, and a screen linked into the electronic hearth computer system for looking up recipes, communication and entertainment while working in the kitchen, each bedroom was also wired into the house computer system. An electronic ‘butler’ with a video camera answers the door and takes messages if nobody is home, stuff like that.
I forsee a small touchscreen in every room that will combine a clock, music/video entertainment, day/date calendar. It would be great to have in hospital - when my dad was in the ICU there was a whiteboard that the people would update every day with the names of his primary nurse, the respiratory tech, the housekeeping staff, day and date. I could see that being done by computer instead of whiteboard, with little things like appointments with imaging, stuff like that to keep the patient informed. We got my mom a large format clock/calendar/temperature outside thingy from amazon, but I wish the ipad had been around for about 15 years so we could have gotten her in the habit of using it to check day date and stuff like that so she would still do it now [alzheimers] because I could use it remotely to remind her to take her meds, or to let her know when we are going to visit [currently we just send her a bouquet with a card that tells her when we will be visiting.]
People will also tend to move to smart phones that are essentially tiny computers that have all the functions, go on the internet, generate a virtual keyboard. We might even get into implanting interface tools as well - like that person who had the magnet implanted in his finger, I see implanted RFID to help you control your house and office, maybe even act as a credit card PIN/ID thing. [wont that screw with the fundies who believe in revalations]
“Mom? I read that ‘teen pregnancy’ was a big problem in the 20th and 21st centuries. Why did teens want to get pregnant?”
“Well they didn’t want to, but they wanted to have sex and the pregnancy was an unplanned consequence”.
“Huh? How do you get pregnant without planning to?”
“This was before they invented the shot that all children get, the one that you have to get the neutralizing shot for when you want to have children.”
“You don’t mean any women who had sex automatically got pregnant!?”
“Not necessarily; they had some primitive hormone treatments they called ‘the pill’, but you had to plan to use it. You had to actively try not to get pregnant.”
