How much of our culture will be remembered in 500 years?

Cafe Society
1

This is something I’ve been thinking about for a while now.

500 years in the future, much of our culture today will be available to anyone who still wants to view it. And not in faded, old black and white, but in full digital, undamaged quality.

But the same is true for everything we create from now on. After 500 years of collecting so much data from human history, what will stand out from our era?

Imagine how we would see our ancestors if we could load up DVDs of Aristotle being interviewed, or we could watch the plays and listen to the music from 500 years ago with a clarity as if it were just yesterday. How would that change our perception of human society?

So in 500 years, people will see us in much different ways than how we see our ancestors 500 years ago. How will that play out?

Will people still watch MAS*H? Will there be cults of people who live the 1990’s vicariously by immersing themselves in the images, movies, and music of the times?

Who will be our great artists that will be remembered as we remember Beethoven and Plato today?

In music, the only artists that I can think of that will stand tall in history are the Beatles. Their stature seems to be growing with time already, and it seems to me that eventually they will come to represent 20th century pop music.

Are there any other musical acts that will still be household names in 500 years?

How about movies? Which movies are eternal classics? Given the tens of thousands of movies that will be made in the coming centuries, will any of ours be remembered?

One thing we have going for our culture’s place in history is that the digital ‘record’ begins with us. In 500 years, we’ll be the earliest culture for which there is a major digitally-saved record of our news, sports, recreation. In a sense, we’ll be seen as the first ‘modern’ society.

Any thoughts?

2

Of course I can’t do anything more than make a wild guess, but I think anything has the possibility to be remembered. Assuming technology hasn’t left everything from our time in the dust considering all of it to be useless crap then anything could be popular or remembered. Who’s to say that a month’s worth of tapes from The View isn’t mislabeled or tucked away in some archive only to be found 500 years later. Once the tapes were viewed (heh) there might be some big religious movement and the ladies on the show could be thought of as saints or something.

Anything having to do with the atomic bomb will probably be remembered, unless there’s a nuclear war that ends the world. Maybe cartoons will be kept around, and little kids 500 years from now will point and laugh at the misfortune of all of us alive today that had to watch two dimensional cartoon characters on a screen and on top of that, it wasn’t even possible to interact with the cartoon characters! I have no idea.

500 years is an awfully long time away (at least from one person’s perspective). It seems awfully difficult to figure out what would be remembered and for what reasons.

3

Remembered by who? The average Joe? The average history major? A specialist in 21st century studies?

I’m sure someone like ArchiveGuy will pop in to point out the fallacies in assuming that everything will be saved just because it’s digital.

4

Cecil and Carrot Top.

5

I was thinking more along the lines of remaining in the public consciousness, much like Bach, Beethoven, Aristotle, Galileo, etc.

6

It’s hard to say. Shakespeare was a populist, pretty much the David E. Kelley or Steven Bochco of his era, and he would have been rather surprised to find out his works are today rated up there along with Sophocles and Aristophanes. Who knows, Law & Order might be seen as high drama in 500 years.

7

I have no doubt that future generations will be playing Frank Zappa and be amazed that he wasn’t the Philosopher King of his day.

8

actually, while I accept that much of what we have now is in archival form already, how accessible will it be in 500years?

A book that is 500years old is still readable without any facny tech. The language might be heavy going, but with a bit of effort it’s understandable, but a floppy disc (let’s say an old 5" floppy) takes quite some effortto simlpy access the information on it: first you need to find the right sort of disc drive, and then the software, etc etc etc. so how archival are DVDs, Video cassettes, CD-ROMs, etc?

So while all this material is being automatically archived as a by-product of our current culture, will it still be accessible? And whilst I know that doesn’t answer the OP, it is a fairly heavy modifier on the question.

Given that modifier, I think those things that would have the most effect, and/or remain in the public consciousness, a la Shakespeare, would be things that have almost saturation point now (not short-term saturation, like a song on heavy rotation on the radio, but things you’ll hear referenced maybe once a week, once a month since their inception, onwards, ad infinitum).

Mayhaps t’would be things that are repeated and revisited all the time. Frank Kapra films (It’s a Wonderful Life), Brady Bunch re-runs (and that whole lates 60’s/early 70’s tv thing), Steven King and John Grisham pot-boilers, The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, AC/DC.

Would Superman/Batman/Spiderman still be in the public consciousness? I know we still look at Robin Hood, but do we look at other popular, fictional heroes from days of yore?

What else?

I presume we’re leaving science out of this and focusing on the arts? Cos Stephen Hawkings would be in there if we’re on science too.

9

Star Wars. 500 years from now people will still dress as their favorite characters, many of which will be entirely new to that era. Those movies will still be showing up on cable television just as sporadically as they do now. We can only hope they never forget the original greats: No greater intellectual/Imperial than Thrawn, no greater bad-ass than Boba Fett, and no greater villain than Darth Vader
ICP. No matter what age, Juggalos always have, and always will exist. Eventually, after all them years, the cd sells will catch up and ICP will be the biggest record sellers of all time. And too dead to know it.
Psychopachik Vampire

10

Actually, you’re right. I reckon StarWars will survive.
Even with all the dectractors, in fact possibly BECAUSE OF the detractors!

11

I think Superman is the 20th century pop-culture artifact most likely to survive into the 26th century. I’d venture to say that Superman is probably the single most widely known fictional character in existence, and has mindshare even among those who’ve never read or even seen a comic.

12

I’m guessing that Tolkien will be remembered by somebody.

13

I think that much of the information that we have archived in digital form today will survive indefinitely, as long as our technological society keeps ticking along. I’m not so worried about technological obsolescence, because the material will be continually transferred to new ones as the old technologies become obsolete.

Look at music - a good percentage of the music recorded on tape has been remastered digitally. Stuff that was available on album transferred to CD. And now, much of that music is starting to migrate its way into SACD and other DVD formats, and of course into MP3’s. I’m sure there will be some super new terabyte storage in our future, and I’m equally certain that the first thing people will do when that stuff becomes available is to start transferring all their current digital files to it.

The interesting thing to me is that our era is unique, so there is little guidance in the past for us to use to figure out what of our culture will survive the future. The only material that survives from 1,000 years ago is the stuff that was important enough to be subjected to the extremely expensive hand-duplication process. But now, we can save everything. If people want to know about the history of the Gulf War, they’ll be able to dial up a 500 year old copy of Meet The Press and watch us discussing it in depth.

And how will having that kind of connection change society? What kind of society would we be today if we carried with us video of our 500 year old ancestors discussing the implications of discovering the new world?

Another thing that’s unique about us is that it’s been only the last 100 years or so that we’ve been able to record our culture in audio and video, and only 60 years since we could do it with really high quality. So we’re the first society that will be recorded and saved, which will probably give our culture much more weight than subsequent ones. So even if there is another band as transformative and successful as the Beatles in 200 years, well, the Beatles were still the first. Same with other media of our time.

14

My, you are an optimist! Continually migrating works from one medium to another is expensive. Archivists in the past have not had to face that continual expense — a book, photograph, or document required no hardware to be viewed.

Now, what’s not migrated is, after a certain time and for all practical purposes, lost. Let’s say I die in 2050, and leave a box of floppy disks made in the 1990s. How accessible will be the hardware and software necessary to read the documents on those disks? Will whoever owns the disks be willing to search out technicians who could handle the job, and to pay whatever the 2050 equivalent is of $30/hour to have a professional make those files readable? Or will the owners of the disks just say to hell with it, and toss them out?

15

But the necessary hardware and software could be trivially easy to make, by the standards of 2050. As long as just one record of the layout of a floppy disk and the files on it survived, you could make software to read it. The hardware’s just a few magnets and servos, isn’t it? Considering the colossal number of disks of all descriptions that will still be in existence then, I think future archaeologists will be willing to stump up the money to design a disk reading machine if they don’t already have one.
I agree with Sam Stone that our culture will have a special status. We revere the ancient Greeks, but many of their ideas weren’t new, they just left a more complete record.

16

Most likely, your grandchildren will say “What a senile old fool he was, not copying his floppy-disk files onto more modern media!” and whatever masterpiece you’ve written on those disks will be tossed along with your collection of other 1990s junk, like your There’s Something About Mary action figures and Ventura for Governor buttons.

17

Based on past performance, I see no reason to believe that oldies stations will EVER change their playlists, or that cable channels will EVER change theirs.

18

I think a hell of a lot will stick around. We’re much better archivists than 500 years ago, and change comes along more rapidly than before, due to a larger population and an increasingly globalised culture. Sure, the Beatles will be remembered, but they hardly represent 20th century music. I don’t believe that future generations will just forget that Ragtime, Jazz, Blues, Country, Electronica or Hip Hop existed. Cultural interests are more diverse these days, but they are similarly more global. 500 years ago, people in Australia weren’t listening to the same music as people in England, or people in Japan, or people in Brazil. These days, we can all see and enjoy a hip hop album, an action movie and a bestselling novel. These things are less likely to be forgotten.

I think The Simpsons will certainly be remembered very highly. They are fairly populist, but like Shakespeare, amidst that populism is a lot of very highbrow references and humour. Kids could study Lisa’s Substitute in school 500 years from now, and like Shakespearean texts, there’d even be a foreword explaining where the writers derived the plot from.

19

Do you not think Mickey Mouse is more recognisable or widely known? I’m pretty sure Disney stuff will be remembered, simply due to its cultural impact.

Not dissing Superman of course. Or even sucking up to Disney.

I’m not sure on the lastability of DVDs or CDs. i know its come up in GQ more than once. I wouldn’t rate video cassettes to last 500 years at any rate.

20

The techniques that advertisers use to get potential customers to remember their products will probably survive 5 centuries from now. Icons such as McDonald’s golden arches will be interpreted as a symbol of food for the primitive man. The Nike swoosh will be synonymous with apparel, our descendents will think the Microsoft banner will be indicative of our universal acceptance of their computer interface in the days before ozone depletion.