Bill Gates.
I have a feeling mob movies will stand the test of time. So I’ll also say Al Pacino and Robert Deniro.
NM
Harvey Wallbanger?
Their could also be someone who would otherwise be a relatively minor historical figure but is made famous sometime in the future. Oda Nobunaga, for example, is a lot more well known today than other warlords of comparable status due to the video game series made about him. I think that very few people outside of Japan would have recognized the name 30 years ago, but now he is much more widely known. Perhaps a similar thing will occur 1000 years from now about someone who we don’t really hear much about right now.
Maybe that Homeless Guy with the Golden Radio Voice?
Alongside the Beatles, I’d say Dylan. A lot of his songs have entered (or will enter) the folk tradition which will keep them alive
I’m quite a fan of Hildegard of Bingen, I have a few disks of her compositions. She was born over 900 years ago.
It’s possible that some cultural figures will be remembered in 1000 years’ time, but there’s no way of predicting what culture(s) will be like then, any more than Hildegard could have imagined what life would be like in the 21st century. Would anyone in Hildegard’s time have expected that her work would (partially) survive and that of her contemporaries would be lost and forgotten? Probably not.
Andrew Wiles.
From this era, though not still alive:
Ray Kroc
Sam Walton
These names to me symbolize the shrinking and homogenization of the world.
The guy’s been dead only a couple of generations, and already you’re fucking up his name.
But to address the question: probably nobody. There’ll probably be a couple of apocalypses, and civilization will be re-set after each one. Someone like the popes, kings, queens, presidents, etc. will be remembered only if “Western civilization” survives, which I’m betting against. Even with all the information being created and saved, there’s no guarantee any of it will survive.
Remember Ozymandius?
At one time I could name all of the kings of England since William the Conqueror (and even a few of the ones that came before), as well as several of the Roman dynasties and emperors…why would this be much different?
It gets back into what is meant by ‘remembered’. You mean the average person on the street asked a pop question about? I doubt most people could name CURRENT politicians, even their own representatives, and not just in the US but pretty much everywhere. My take on ‘remembered’ is that someone could use whatever passes for Google 1000 years from now and look them up…and that they may WANT to look them up.
As for the US not being around in 1000 years, that’s impossible to tell. It could be…or it might not be. I’d say that if our civilization is still functioning at all, odds are good that the US will still be here…as will the UK in some form or other. And if they are, there will still be some idiot educator types who want them to memorize stupid lists of people, places and things.
-XT
See, I don’t think that there won’t be a chance. Today, we know pretty much every Roman emperor that ruled, and that was significantly more than a thousand years ago…and in a time where records weren’t nearly as pervasive as today. We live in an information age, and assuming that civilization doesn’t completely collapse that is only going to grow.
If we are talking about what people know ‘off the top of their head’, then I agree…most likely it would only be the most popular or perhaps notorious presidents (be ironic if Bush II was one of the ones remembered in infamy :p). But people ‘remember’ stuff today by essentially typing www.google.com and doing a search…and I imagine that 1000 years from now you could do that using some sort of direct brain interface to the intergalatic net or whatever they have then, again assuming something doesn’t happen to cause civilization to go completely tits up.
Today, each of us has information and data at our fingertips undreamed of by our ancestors 1000 years ago. Heck, hundreds of millions or even billions of people COULD find out who was emperor of Rome in 141 AD if they wanted to (looks like it’s Antoninus Pius). I ‘remember’ this because it’s part of the ever expanding database of human knowledge that is searchable anytime I want it, and unless that stops being true our ancestors will have unreal access in the future.
-XT
I sure do, and I’ll bet the average SDMBer does as well, which makes him an odd choice to prove your “probably nobody” answer. (And, contrary to Shelley, the guy’s giant statue still stands.)
I’m also baffled by all the people who think Obama will be remembered in 1000 years. I agree that he will be a household for a very long time. Perhaps two or three hundred years. But I think some people aren’t really considering just how long 1000 years really is. In 1000 years, it is unlikely that the United States will still be a country. It is unlikely that the average person will be aware of the concept of “race.” And it’s possible that democracy will have been supplanted as the preferred system of civilized government by something we have not yet considered. So the first person of a particular race being elected in the U.S. will be absolutely minute trivia in 1000 years.
This is actually what popped into my head. I don’t think any modern politicians make the cut, but we still remember the some great entertainers from 1000+ years ago (Aristophanes and Sophocles are still being performed today, and they’re 2500 years old). The question is whether any entertainers are alive today who have made enough impact. I think the Beatles (they still count as “alive” until the last one dies, as far as I’m concerned) are certainly candidates. I think Spielberg is too behind-the-scenes to be a household name in 1000 years. And no actor alive today will be remembered in 200 years, much less 1000 years. Someone upthread mentioned Stephen King, which I think is an interesting choice. Books will stand the test of time better than movies, and if any currently-alive author will be remembered, it’s King. The only problem is that nobody will speak modern English in 1000 years: reading King in 3011 will be like reading Beowulf today.
I have an addition to the 1011 discussion. Lady Godiva was probably born around this time, though I can’t find a definitive date. (Wikipedia suggests 970, which seems a bit early, since she died between 1066 and 1086.) Lady Godiva’s presence on our list brings up the point that sometimes people get remembered for doing just one thing that enters the popular imagination and sticks there. Therefore, I propose that one possibility for the 3011 list is Rick Astley. Note: that’s a joke.
Oprah, or somebody else in the business of self-promotion/advertising
Ray Kurzweil. He’ll make sure he’s remembered, since he’ll still be alive.
Gandhi. I wouldn’t be surprised if a great many Earthlings entered “Gandhian” in the Religion section of the One Earth Government Census Form by then.
Pretty sure Gandhi’s dead.
Except Gandhi isn’t alive today. Eh, close enough for raga.
[QUOTE=Randy Seltzer]
I’m also baffled by all the people who think Obama will be remembered in 1000 years.
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And I’m equally baffled by people who think that humans will actually regress compared to our ancestors, or that somehow the folks in the future will know less than we know today about people who lived a thousand years ago. It’s as if people (typing on a message board that has posters that span the globe) can’t actually see the technology all around them. Even if we stagnate and stay exactly where we are today for the next 1000 years Obama will be at least as well known as, say Ethelred II (Ethelred the Unready).
Good grief, even if we revert to some sort of Mad Max hell hole there is at least as much chance that we’ll be able to retain the basic facts of who the rulers are as our ancestors did in 1000 AD.
I think it’s quite likely that the US will still be a country in 1000 years, but even if it isn’t, so what? The England of 1000 years ago doesn’t exist anymore, yet we know quite a bit about them and certainly who the rulers were. We collectively know a lot about nations that have existed for far less time than the US and impacted their world far less than the US…and when the life span of the average person was less than half of what it is today, and the records kept were laughably smaller than today. Even if you think that all the networks will crash, the US has truly massive paper and other non-digital records of everything you can think of…and we aren’t the only country that does this. The records in Iron Mountain alone are probably equal to the all the data from all the nations on earth combined prior to the 20th century.
:dubious: Even if race isn’t IMPORTANT to folks 1000 years ago, they won’t be blind. A lot of stuff that happened 1000 or 2000 or 4000 years ago are vastly different than how we look at stuff today, yet we can still understand the motives, since we are all human. Our descendents (well, your descendents…I intend to still be alive 1000 years from now ;)) will understand the concept of ‘race’ 1000 years from now and what a milestone it was for America to have a first ‘black’ president, even if it seems pointless and silly to them…sort of like how burning witches seems to us today.
The concept of monarchy seems fairly outdated to us today, yet we know the names of kings and princes from 1000 years ago. Even if the information is trivial 1000 years ago, so what? The 31st century equivalent of Trivial Pursuit might have a question about ‘who was the first black president of the nation formerly known as the United State?’, or Alex Trebek’s preserved brain might be asking for answers in the form of a question from his summer home in Antarctica.
If the movies are still around and in circulation then huge amounts of data will be as well. If the technology exists to watch and play the movies then most or all of our current technology will be as well, because the film won’t survive 1000 years…it would have to be digitally preserved.
Will you be able to walk up to the average man on the street in some mega-city in Mongolia in 3011 AD and ask them who President of the US Obama was and have a good chance that they will know? Maybe, maybe not. But I bet that a quick search of whatever they use for Google then would get them the answer in less than a second…and I bet that the number of people who know who Obama was is greater than the number of people today who know who Ethelred the Unready was. 
-XT