# How will our era be misremembered 2000 years from now? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [February 10, 2011, 9:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-will-our-era-be-misremembered-2000-years-from-now/570954 "2011-02-10T21:58:46Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Malthus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/85f322/32.png) [@Malthus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malthus)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2011, 2:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-will-our-era-be-misremembered-2000-years-from-now/570954/21 "2011-02-11T14:56:43Z")
The horrible first half of the 20th century will come to colour the whole age, for a hundred years at least on either side of it. When people think of our time, it will be like a replay of the early _History Channel_ - all WW2, all the time. ---
**Author:** ![jayjay](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jayjay/32/6765_2.png) [@jayjay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jayjay)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2011, 4:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-will-our-era-be-misremembered-2000-years-from-now/570954/22 "2011-02-11T16:13:23Z")
> [@Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](#): > > Much like ancient Rome we may be seen as decadent and immoral. Patrick Buchanan may be our Cato, Paul Johnson our Tacitus. George W. Bush our Nero. ---
**Author:** ![jayjay](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jayjay/32/6765_2.png) [@jayjay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jayjay)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2011, 4:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-will-our-era-be-misremembered-2000-years-from-now/570954/23 "2011-02-11T16:14:44Z")
> [@Koxinga](#): > > Eleanor Roosevelt will be esteemed as the first Reverend Mother, taking advantage of her marriage to a barbaric warrior king (who punctated his half century of rule with frequent animal combat in the amphitheatre, before a bear chewed his legs off). You read the Dune Encyclopedia, too? 😃 ---
**Author:** ![The\_Tooth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/c67d28/32.png) [@The\_Tooth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Tooth)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2011, 4:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-will-our-era-be-misremembered-2000-years-from-now/570954/24 "2011-02-11T16:18:44Z")
> [@Miller](#): > > Most people probably won’t realize that there was a fifty year (and counting) gap between landing on the moon, and real exploration and exploitation of outer space. I suspect that if Neil Armstrong is remembered, he’ll be conflated with a lot of other space-related “firsts.” People will think he was the first man on the moon, and the guy who colonized Mars. > > That’s assuming that it doesn’t happen to Yuri Gagarin first, of course. Or an astronaut about which little has survived, other than a few dates and a name: Laika. ---
**Author:** ![Freddy\_the\_Pig](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/a587f6/32.png) [@Freddy\_the\_Pig](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Freddy_the_Pig)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2011, 4:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-will-our-era-be-misremembered-2000-years-from-now/570954/25 "2011-02-11T16:31:47Z")
The Nazis will be romanticized. Like Genghis Khan, or the Vikings, or pirates. Everyone will enjoy a good tank-and-jackboot epic. ---
**Author:** ![Sunspace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sunspace/32/1250_2.png) [@Sunspace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sunspace)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2011, 5:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-will-our-era-be-misremembered-2000-years-from-now/570954/26 "2011-02-11T17:08:52Z")
> [@Freddy\_the\_Pig](#): > > The Nazis will be romanticized. Like Genghis Khan, or the Vikings, or pirates. Everyone will enjoy a good tank-and-jackboot epic. I seem to remember a throwaway line in an early Larry Niven book set 300 years in the future: there was a football (?) team called the Berlin Nazis. ---
**Author:** ![Captain\_Amazing](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6de8d8/32.png) [@Captain\_Amazing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Amazing)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2011, 7:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-will-our-era-be-misremembered-2000-years-from-now/570954/27 "2011-02-11T19:22:08Z")
> [@Blake](#): > > That will depend on what happens in future of course, but it is doubtful if the US could ever be seen as equivalent to the Roman or British Empires. Those were physical empires that lasted for centuries, and during their time they were undisputed masters of vast areas of the world and they were never seriously challenged militarily. The United States is about twice the size of the Roman Empire (9.8 million km[sup]2[/sup] vs 5.5 million km[sup]2[/sup]). We have been, since the 1840s, the preeminent power in the western hemisphere. We have the largest economy in the world, and the third largest population. ---
**Author:** ![alphaboi867](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alphaboi867/32/3898_2.png) [@alphaboi867](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/alphaboi867)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2011, 8:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-will-our-era-be-misremembered-2000-years-from-now/570954/28 "2011-02-11T20:29:29Z")
> [@GIGObuster](#): > > I think that the view on the subject from the guy at \*The Perry Bible Fellowship \*comic is required: > > [The Perry Bible Fellowship - Offbeat comic strip by Nicholas Gurewitch. Includes archives, information about the author, and purchases.](http://www.pbfcomics.com/?cid=PBF209-Now_Showing.jpg) > > 🙂 Or [this](http://starslip.com/2008/10/17/starslip-number-894/) futuristic period 20th century crime drama. > [@Miller](#): > > …That’s assuming that it doesn’t happen to Yuri Gagarin first, of course. I’m 25 and had teachers insist that _Buzz Aldrin_ was the first man in space. He wasn’t even the first Americans. ---
**Author:** ![Musicat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/musicat/32/20189_2.png) [@Musicat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Musicat)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2011, 8:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-will-our-era-be-misremembered-2000-years-from-now/570954/29 "2011-02-11T20:36:26Z")
Since, 2000 years from now, mankind will still not have returned to the moon since 1972, there will be conspiracy theories about how the 1969 landing was faked, because everyone knows it’s impossible to travel to the moon thru the deadly Van Allen Belts. In short, not much different from now. ---
**Author:** ![Frylock](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/ce7236/32.png) [@Frylock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frylock)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2011, 9:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-will-our-era-be-misremembered-2000-years-from-now/570954/30 "2011-02-11T21:58:52Z")
So nobody thinks they’re remember us alot better than we remember Rome, due to advances in technologies for preserving information? ---
**Author:** ![Lumpy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lumpy/32/446_2.png) [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2011, 10:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-will-our-era-be-misremembered-2000-years-from-now/570954/31 "2011-02-11T22:05:50Z")
> [@Frylock](#): > > So nobody thinks they’re remember us alot better than we remember Rome, due to advances in technologies for preserving information? As I mentioned in the OP, the technologies for preserving information are also the same technologies for altering or fabricating it. Not to mention plain old disinterest in getting the gritty details correct. ---
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2011, 10:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-will-our-era-be-misremembered-2000-years-from-now/570954/32 "2011-02-11T22:32:40Z")
> [@RickJay](#): > > William Wallace would no more have worn a kilt than he would have worn a Lakers jersey. Because he was a Celtics fan?😕 > [@Frylock](#): > > So nobody thinks they’re remember us alot better than we remember Rome, due to advances in technologies for preserving information? Actually the Egyptians had much better technology for preserving information. They carved it onto giant rocks. Modern optical and magnetic storge only lasts for a few decades and only if it is stored properly. There is also the matter of actually having devices to play it on. Remember that episode of South Park where Cartman has himself accidently frozen for 300 years so he could get a Wii but in 300 years they no longer had the adapters to play it on their holo-screens? Looking back, they will probably view the 20th Century as we view the 30 Years War. A barbaric time from back when cars didn’t fly, fusion wasn’t cold and before nation states all lived in peace under the New World Order imposed by a master race of genetically enhanced cows. [Or maybe something like this.](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DueSvcjn810) ---
**Author:** ![jayjay](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jayjay/32/6765_2.png) [@jayjay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jayjay)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2011, 10:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-will-our-era-be-misremembered-2000-years-from-now/570954/33 "2011-02-11T22:34:37Z")
Plus, if anything, our means of conveying information are even MORE ephemeral than ever before. Any happenstance that shuts down the electrical grid more or less permanently renders a HUGE proportion of our society’s information inoperable. And digital storage is subject to many more methods of accidental destruction than paper. The Dead Sea Scrolls lasted for thousands of years. Information on a CD is subject to not only destruction of the disc, but obsolescence of any way to read it. And don’t even get me started on magnetic storage! ---
**Author:** ![Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bosda_di_chi_of_tricor/32/16845_2.png) [@Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bosda_Di_Chi_of_Tricor)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2011, 10:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-will-our-era-be-misremembered-2000-years-from-now/570954/34 "2011-02-11T22:40:34Z")
Not one scrap of film or paper from our era will have survived. Only items in the dryness of the deserts will have survived. So, the future will write of the glorious, 20th Century Islamic Era. And the Moon will get no mention. ---
**Author:** ![XT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xt/32/456_2.png) [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2011, 10:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-will-our-era-be-misremembered-2000-years-from-now/570954/35 "2011-02-11T22:45:32Z")
Even if modern books are more susceptible to deterioration than things like the dead sea scrolls there are orders of magnitude more books today than there were ever scrolls from Egypt…and they are distributed throughout the world. There are vast repositories in the US where books and other media are housed. And all of this assumes some great collapse where all our data disappears. Why should it? Sure, that might happen, but it’s not something guaranteed to happen. Our digital data doesn’t rely on CD’s to house it…it simply relies on our distributed data networks to continue to operate. As the systems become more and more distributed and fault tolerant, the more secure that data becomes, assuming that you don’t have a complete collapse of the entire civilization. And as long as we don’t go back to hunting and gathering, that leaves us with hundreds of billions of books, magazines and other printed materials, some non-zero percentage of which will survive to one degree or another…especially if we don’t lose the ability to make paper and use printing presses. As long as some civilization and technology survives a lot more of the information from our time will survive for future generations than survived the fall of Rome. -XT ---
**Author:** ![Damuri\_Ajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/898d66/32.png) [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2011, 10:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-will-our-era-be-misremembered-2000-years-from-now/570954/36 "2011-02-11T22:49:10Z")
> [@nani](#): > > Clothing will be pretty badly misremembered. Like how they put everyone in kilts in Braveheart, a movie about our time made in the year 3000 CE might show us wearing circa 2300 CE clothes, backwards with the tags still on. Cavaricci’s and padded shoulders will be de rigeur for all period pieces. > [@](#): > > I’m sure the moon landing will be a “landmark event” forever unless human society completely collapses and we forget everything, just because it’s the first time that we set foot on a non-earth land. That’s a pretty big deal. I’m not sure how exactly it will be remembered, though. Will Neil Armstrong be a household name in any 4000 CE country? Maybe it will be like the fall of Constantinople to the Ottomans - Most people are vaguely aware of it, a good amount can give a super-basic version of what happened and when, and a few people can give details like names, dates, and history. Or neil Armstrong will be like Lief Ericson, people will know he was the first man on the moon but until someone goes there and creates a colony, it’ll be trivia (unless Aemrica builds that moonbase). Most importantly they will have created a mythology around Tom Cruise and John Trolta, the Prophets of Hubbard who were persecuted for their beliefs in the now ONE TRUE religion of Scientology. Someone will make a movie called the Passion of the Fonz (yeah I know that neither of them is the Fonz, that won’t stop them tho). ---
**Author:** ![Frylock](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/ce7236/32.png) [@Frylock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frylock)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2011, 10:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-will-our-era-be-misremembered-2000-years-from-now/570954/37 "2011-02-11T22:51:26Z")
> [@xtisme](#): > > Even if modern books are more susceptible to deterioration than things like the dead sea scrolls there are orders of magnitude more books today than there were ever scrolls from Egypt…and they are distributed throughout the world. There are vast repositories in the US where books and other media are housed. > > And all of this assumes some great collapse where all our data disappears. Why should it? Sure, that might happen, but it’s not something guaranteed to happen. Our digital data doesn’t rely on CD’s to house it…it simply relies on our distributed data networks to continue to operate. As the systems become more and more distributed and fault tolerant, the more secure that data becomes, assuming that you don’t have a complete collapse of the entire civilization. > > And as long as we don’t go back to hunting and gathering, that leaves us with hundreds of billions of books, magazines and other printed materials, some non-zero percentage of which will survive to one degree or another…especially if we don’t lose the ability to make paper and use printing presses. As long as some civilization and technology survives a lot more of the information from our time will survive for future generations than survived the fall of Rome. > > -XT Exactly this, IMO. Unless there’s a total collapse of civilization, I think people 2000 years from now, if they want to for some reason, will be able to know as much about the present era as we know about, say, the 50’s. ---
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2011, 10:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-will-our-era-be-misremembered-2000-years-from-now/570954/38 "2011-02-11T22:52:08Z")
> [@xtisme](#): > > Even if modern books are more susceptible to deterioration than things like the dead sea scrolls there are orders of magnitude more books today than there were ever scrolls from Egypt…and they are distributed throughout the world. There are vast repositories in the US where books and other media are housed. > > And all of this assumes some great collapse where all our data disappears. Why should it? Sure, that might happen, but it’s not something guaranteed to happen. Our digital data doesn’t rely on CD’s to house it…it simply relies on our distributed data networks to continue to operate. As the systems become more and more distributed and fault tolerant, the more secure that data becomes, assuming that you don’t have a complete collapse of the entire civilization. > > And as long as we don’t go back to hunting and gathering, that leaves us with hundreds of billions of books, magazines and other printed materials, some non-zero percentage of which will survive to one degree or another…especially if we don’t lose the ability to make paper and use printing presses. As long as some civilization and technology survives a lot more of the information from our time will survive for future generations than survived the fall of Rome. > > -XT Of course some non-zero percentage will survive. But a lot of it won’t. It’s not like Facebook and Youtube will exist in perpetuity and keep backing up all that data for the next several millenia. In my old job, we would sometimes have to collect old data that companies were paying Iron Mountain to store (probably next to the Arc of the Covenant). Often, we simply couldn’t do anything with it because we couldn’t recreate the environment to restore it. And this is stuff a decade old. 2000 years is a long time to keep data no one cares about. ---
**Author:** ![XT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xt/32/456_2.png) [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2011, 11:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-will-our-era-be-misremembered-2000-years-from-now/570954/39 "2011-02-11T23:07:05Z")
[QUOTE=msmith537] Of course some non-zero percentage will survive. But a lot of it won’t. [/QUOTE] Right…but consider. How many Dead Sea Scrolls were there? Let’s be generous and say there were 100 copies. Hell, a thousand. How many copies of, say, the Encyclopedia Britannica do you suppose are out there? A million? 10 million? The odds of one complete surviving are huge, especially if you factor in people making additional copies of copies. > [@](#): > > It’s not like Facebook and Youtube will exist in perpetuity and keep backing up all that data for the next several millenia. There is still data available from archive from the early days of the internet. Papers, transactions, correspondence. Will Facebook and Youtube data survive all that time? Probably not…but a hell of a lot of data WILL survive in that time period, assuming all our data networks don’t die completely. > [@](#): > > In my old job, we would sometimes have to collect old data that companies were paying Iron Mountain to store (probably next to the Arc of the Covenant). Often, we simply couldn’t do anything with it because we couldn’t recreate the environment to restore it. And this is stuff a decade old. 2000 years is a long time to keep data no one cares about. It depends on the data. Youtube videos or Facebook entries don’t represent the sum total of electronic data. And I’d be surprised if even all of the silly stuff wold be purged, assuming we don’t have a complete collapse. Compression and advances in storage are going to make it easier and easier to keep data…and to mine data. As for Iron Mountain, again it depends on what’s being stored. The key point is ‘data no one cares about’. A lot of stuff stored at places like Iron Mountain and other such sites is data that people DO care about…a lot. -XT ---
**Author:** ![Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/f04885/32.png) [@Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Qin_Shi_Huangdi)\ **Post date:** [February 12, 2011, 1:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-will-our-era-be-misremembered-2000-years-from-now/570954/40 "2011-02-12T01:03:54Z")
> [@jayjay](#): > > George W. Bush our Nero. More likely our Tiberius or perhaps Claudius. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-will-our-era-be-misremembered-2000-years-from-now/570954.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-will-our-era-be-misremembered-2000-years-from-now/570954.md?page=3)