As things stand now - I agree that Neil Armstrong is the most likely candidate alive today to be remembered in 1000 years. If you extend things out a bit I think the Wright Brothers and Albert Einstein have a realistic chance at being remembered as well. Of course - there will be statues dedicated to that Frazzled poster on the SDMB - but I digress…
I think there is a possibility that our time will be a little better represented because we put enough effort into storing our movies and TV shows that a few will likely still be preserved. There’s always some degree of fascination in seeing how people lived in the past - and our time will be the first period that can potentially be seen as we actually are. Future viewers will probably pay more attention to us simply because we’re the oldest.
Ooh, excellent example (modulo the caveat about the unknown exact year of birth).
Well, my point was that, even though it’s possible to be remembered for a long, long time (e.g., Jesus, Socrates, Ramses I), it’s also exceedingly rare. So rare, in fact, that if you pick a particular ancient year at random, and look for examples from that time, you may well find it rather difficult. It’s only easy to find examples when you search over huge swathes of history to compensate for how rare such legendary status is. Which may paper over how likely the answer to “Is anyone from today going to be remembered in 1000 years” is to be “No”.
In fairness, too, the candidate pool 1,000 years ago (or at any time prior) was a lot smaller than today. The population of the whole world then was probably less than just the United States today.
From that perspective, there should be a slew of living candidates.
Actually I’m not convinced that our present era will punch its weight in the long-view cultural memory.
I’m not sure about that. For all that she’s done her job as a constitutional monarch admirably, I’m not sure that there’s much she’s done that would justify being remembered in 1000 years.
Unless you think she’ll be the last monarch of the UK - I personally doubt that, but if it turns out to be the case then certainly she’ll be remembered.
I think I disagree. Just in the last 120 years or so, the medium of early movies and recorded musicians didn’t last long, and was rarely transferred to the new. We can record and store to our little heart’s desire everything we want, but will it be usable in 1000 years?
I imagine Sarah Palin will be remembered a thousand years from now for being elected POTUS in 2012 and starting World War III with China on October 28, 2015.
That sort of thing tends to make the history books.
i think it’s kind of disingenuous to say that “nobody knows anyone from 1011” since it was the heart of the dark ages in western history. many people before and since 1011 are easily recognizable. i’ll add Vlad the Great - christianizer of Russia to the mix of famous 1011’ers.
as for whom alive now? I think Bill Gates will earn as much notoriety as Rockafeller, but who knows if those two moneybags will hold the same cache as say… Crassius. Maybe. Maybe not.
Neil Armstrong is a definite, and possibly the first person to go to mars has already been born (in china).
Obama might be in the running as America’s first black president, president during the great recession, brought health care to the masses, and a nobel peace prize to boot.
Hu Jin Tao or his successor could gain some notoriety as the one who rose China from the ashes.
as far as science goes? watson of watson & crick is still alive, hawking is alive, and dawkins is still alive.
nobody in entertainment is going to be make a dent 1000 years from now. not denzel, not madonna, not even the Biebs.
There’s a lot of crap produced in a year that doesn’t deserve to be remembered - but there are a few recordings from each decade we recognize as being important enough to spend the effort on preserving.
Most of the films we consider classics won’t last the test of time. In 1000 years I doubt anybody knows who Luke Skywalker or Harry Potter is. Instead - the films most likely to last will be period pieces that capture what it’s like to live in our time. If films are stored digitally - it’s easier to move them from one media type to another.
On the flip side - in the next 1000 years we may hit a period where humanity is on the brink of survival. If we forget how to read our digital media- our entire period in history will be completely forgotten. Maybe I should break out some stone tablets and bury them in my backyard!
I’m not sure about that one. In 3011, what factoid are people more likely to care about? First man on the moon, or first man in space? Gagarin has the credit for the first real space milestone, and Armstrong will, hopefully, be eclipsed by more significant manned exploration/colonization sometime in the next millenium.
I hope folks at organizations like the Internet Archive have given a great deal of thought and care to the issue of keeping digital media around and readable for a long time. The boon to future history students in being able to browse, say, random threads on the SDMB would be invaluable. (Because of exposure to my insights, of course)
