The medium itself doesn’t last that long. Well it might, but you shouldn’t count on it. CD-R is a little better - some manufacturers claim theirs last 100 years. Still, I think 500 years is stretching it.
By the way, many early TV broadcasts are gone forever because TV stations never archived them. Some stations even re-used old tapes and recorded newer shows onto the tapes.
I also wonder about Internet content. IIRC, the DejaNews UseNet archive was nearly lost when they went under, and I think it would have been irreplacable if it had’t been rescued by Google. How long would the SDMB archive survive?
Also, Magnetic storage has a relatively short liftime. For instance, VHS tape are onlz good for about 30 years, while celluloid can be preserved with no quality loss for a minimum of 50 years. I bet the Super8 films of your parents (or yours if you’re old enough) will last longer than than your newly recorded digital video on your PC.
There are billions of disks out there, I bet some will make it to 2050 in a readable state, albeit readable with some effort perhaps. They won’t need our entire archive to get a very good picture of our culture anyway, just a sample. And this is all assuming that large amounts of data will not be repeatedly transferred to newer media.
Whenever this subject comes up in threads I never feel enough emphasis is placed on what I think is key to the issue. That is at what rate do we continue to produce these arts between now and then. If we keep making some 600 or so movies a year, and however many records, books, comics and TV shows then the deep past will just be a total cultural overload for our descendants from the 26th century.
I mean when you’ve got the choice of some 300,000 movies maybe the average person will watch some of the very early and notable ones at some point in their lives but I bet the appeal of more recent (for them) eras would have a much greater draw.
Another thing I think we’re doing is moving away from studying “the greats” in school. In the past there were certain books and such which somehow came to be considered essential. But now we’re seeing an effort to diversify education and every generation will grow up with less and less of those common cultural touchstones. And so with out heaping reverance upon a small group of chosen texts future generations will study much more diverse groups whose individual parts are much more transitory.
So perhaps I’d say that they’ll know very little about our culture since they will have so many choices to choose from that there will be very little reason for them to choose our era.
Or perhaps we’ve already pretty much done everything in movies, music, books, etc. and will just be repeating themes and plots for the next 500 years leading to a drastic reduction in the production of these things and marking our era as some sort of golden age. Well, maybe silver.
Regardless of technology, I think there’s a good bet that theater will still be performed.
I can see a few 20th Century works surviving much as the works of Shakespeare and Moliere have. In fact, I would imagine Oklahoma and Our Town will still be performed by high schools and The Diary of Anne Franck will still be read/acted (and probably banned in some areas).
And much like with Shakespeare, you’ll be able to choose from “contemporary” and “traditional” interpretations.
When I took a film course 20 years ago, we had to sit through Potemkin and Birth of a Nation. I remember it as a dreadfully boring experience, but they were required viewing, since they inspired so much of the later film making.
I was cleaning out an older relatives house after she died, and I went for grabs when taking care of the bookshelves. To my dismay, of about 500 volumes, there were only about 100 that I even recognised and 20 that I wanted to save. Shelf after shelf with bestsellers from the 20’-50’s by authours unknown today.
What I want to say is that even fairly new stuff tends to be forgotten. How much of 80’s hair-metal survive today? How many rap artists will be remembered 20 years from now?
And 500 years…?
I think there are at least two layers:
Scholars/students.
I’m pretty sure things that are considered turning points artistically will be studied, if not surviving in the public mind. I’m sure there’ll be obscure university classes on Catcher in the rye. I think any writer who has something profound to say about our world, will be read, as we read Jane Austen or Makepeace Thackery. Clasics they may be, but not something everyone even know of, let alone read. Solzhenitsyn, Sartre, Steinbeck, Camus and maybe, maybe Mailer, Stephen King and some other bestseller writers.
MTv will certainly be studied and I think some epic works from the cinema might make it too.
To be in the popular eye, I think it has to become iconic. I’m sure that movies by Marilyn Monroe and Bogart will be shown, just because their fame is beyond any acting abilities or the quality of the movies. People will swoon over Casablanca, because some things in human nature never change. Mickey Mouse and other Disney icons are there, of course, along with Beatles and (more on the fringe) some jazz giants.
About as many as rock artists from 20 years ago are remembered today. And that’s a lot. Take a look at old 1930s-40s blues. There’s still plenty of artists from that period who are remembered (and revered), and they’re from a genre that was rather obscure at the time. Hip hop is extraordinarily popular. To say that people will just forget about the artists making it in 20 years time is silly. Dre and Public Enemy will be remembered just as Led Zeppelin and The Who are. I’m not saying that Dre or PE will be remembered in 500 years time, but I’m sure hip hop will be. It is just as likely to be remembered as rock or jazz is.
Well, yes, the truly big names. But the record companies are jumping on the band wagon and cranking out rap albums to a hungry crowd of teenagers, like there’s no tomorrow. Out of all these 100’s, maybe 1000’s of artists, how many will remain in the public mind in 20 years. You mention Led Z and the Who. How many of today’s kids have even heard of Vanilla Fudge or MC5? How many of the new wave era bands are remembered now?
So possibly, Dr Dre, 2pak, MnM, Outkast, Biggie and a few more will be remembered, but most will be forgotten.
Skee-Lo? I sincerely doubt it.
Another significant difference between today and yesteryear is the incredible amount of information that is being “created.” 500 years ago there were books (not generally available to the masses), and works of fine art (again, not generally available to the masses). Now there are books, magazines, CDs, photographs, and all other manner of information storage media. A huge glut of “stuff” is out there and it isn’t likely to all go into a landfill or be recycled. It is likely to be around for quite a while.
Of course, 99.9% of the “stuff” out there is shit, but it’ll still be around.
Well, things that have held up so far will likely be known or noted 500 years out:
We know of the Nina, the Pinta and the Santa Maria. We know of the Mayflower. We know of famous leaders. I think that will remain incredibly consistent. Crap takes a backseat over time.
The Wright Flyer
The Apollo program
The Space Shuttle
Einstein
Hitler
Stalin
etc
Looking at some of these suggestions on what are the highlights of our culture today, I’m wondering if it will look like our culture took a sudden dive toward the juvenile: Mickey Mouse, Star Wars, Catcher in the Rye, The Brady Bunch, MTV, rap music, Superman.
It’s like Comic Book Guy suddenly became the arbitrator of our culture. Whatever the quality of these things (debatable), they were primarily aimed at, and primarily consumed by, non-adults. (Trust me, Catcher in the Rye re-read after 35 isn’t as profound as you remember it at 16.)
I think the ongoing list of Academy Award Movies will definitely survive…the cream of the crop already signaled out and more than likely is well preserved and archived for future study.
I guess the same goes for Grammy lists and other music awards with regard to music media, and bestsellers in the fiction and non-fiction book media, etc…
The Crap is already being separated out…
I think National Geographic is doing a great job of archiving too.
I take a different view from the OP. In at least one way, we are living in what future historians might regard as a Dark Age.
Think about it. A lot of what we know about the past comes from perusing personal communications - i.e., letters.
Most interpersonal communications these days take the form of telephone calls or emails. How many people save a hard copy of their emails? Who records all of their telephone conversations? How will future historians know the innermost thoughts of today’s average citizen?
I suppose message boards such as this one (or blogs) might be a substitute, but will this Straight Dope thread be accessible 500 years from now?
Are you kidding? Many, if not most, of the winners of the Academy Award for Best Picture have not gone on to become classics. The Best Picture award for 1940, the year Citizen Kane came out, went to How Green Was My Valley. The Best Picture award for 1977, the year Star Wars came out, went to Annie Hall. People have already started to forget those two “winners.” Quick, how many people reading this thread have seen Cimmaron (1931)? Or Wings (1927)? Or any of the Best Picture winners from before 1939?
