How much will be remembered 2000 or 5000 years from now?

[Mormolyce]

In 2,000 years? Very, very little.

In 5,000? Well how much do you know about the year 3,000BC?

All the quality memes we shared.

It'll be like trying to decipher hieroglyphics to them.

Unless they manage to preserve KnowYourMeme or whatever.

[enigma77]

In 2,000 years? Very, very little.

In 5,000? Well how much do you know about the year 3,000BC?



It'll be like trying to decipher hieroglyphics to them.

Unless they manage to preserve KnowYourMeme or whatever.

But it's different now. History is being recorded and passed down much more and than it used to be. In 3,000 BC only a tiny minority of people was literate, most were without any formal education whatsoever and didn't know a damn thing about major events. Nowadays many more people record history, major events are all over the news and we store history digitally instead of writing it down on scrolls that will crumble to dust in a hundred years. It's incomparable. I'm sure that major events of the 20th century will still be remembered in the year 7000. The first moon landing for example will always be relevant and remembered because of its importance as far as space travel is concerned. You don't just forget a milestone like that. Maybe some minor events will be forgotten, but only if historians start getting lazy and no longer bother to record everything.

[Shadowsgrace]

in 2000-5000 years, all that will be remembered is what the current conqueror's what to remember.

[Afrospinach]

Basically everything non-trivial will be remembered from now on. Assuming no nuclear war, massive solar flare, or whatever else.

On the contrary, the way we store things now days may render our civlisation completely invisible to future archaeologists. There are layers upon layers upon layers of technology that goes into information retrieval that if it were somehow lost it may be impossible to get back.

[Celista]

WoW will be around expansion number 900, so that's a thing.

Spoiler: Murlocs are a playable race and Alliance and Horde have merged together for the 8th time into The Hordance, who's Supreme Lord is the singing Sunflower pet (can't recall its name). Also Garrosh manages to come back from another universe and timeline, Tyrande is still screaming Malfurion all over the place, and the new 2 Lich Kings (yeah, 2) are Hogger and Mickey Mouse (yeah, something related to Disney).

At the rate WoW is going, the playerbase will be lucky to get two more expansions out of the game.

More on-topic: What do you know about life 2000 or 5000 years ago? That will be about the amount that people in the future will care about our era.

Hopefully that is freeing information for all/most of you, it means that the shit you do is mostly meaningless in the long term, including things like creating a family (do you remember your ancestors from 2000 years ago?) so create meaning in your life now, for you, and enjoy your life in the moment.

[Daedius]

So much more knowledge is stored now compared to the past due to computers. Now, whether they keep or not is a different matter.

[Mormolyce]

But it's different now. History is being recorded and passed down much more and than it used to be. In 3,000 BC only a tiny minority of people was literate, most were without any formal education whatsoever and didn't know a damn thing about major events. Nowadays many more people record history, major events are all over the news and we store history digitally instead of writing it down on scrolls that will crumble to dust in a hundred years. It's incomparable. I'm sure that major events of the 20th century will still be remembered in the year 7000. The first moon landing for example will always be relevant and remembered because of its importance as far as space travel is concerned. You don't just forget a milestone like that. Maybe some minor events will be forgotten, but only if historians start getting lazy and no longer bother to record everything.

The question is, how much of it will actually be recorded in the very long term? I mean the ancients had massive libraries, but a lot of them burned down. Temples with stone records were abandoned or debased.

Will we keep all of the data we now have on the internet safe for 2,000 years? Even ignoring the possibility of some kind of Dark Ages or other great societal loss of information, you have to remember that the data we store is growing exponentially.

[Celista]

The question is, how much of it will actually be recorded in the very long term? I mean the ancients had massive libraries, but a lot of them burned down. Temples with stone records were abandoned or debased.

Will we keep all of the data we now have on the internet safe for 2,000 years? Even ignoring the possibility of some kind of Dark Ages or other great societal loss of information, you have to remember that the data we store is growing exponentially.

I doubt that much of it will be, we will move on to new technologies. Much like CDs and cassette players. The bigger question is, how much will they care? They'll probably have the same amount of interest in us as we had for the Roman empire, or possibly less depending on how history plays out. How much do people care or remember about all of tribes and nation-states that existed 5,000 years ago? Most people can probably name 1-2 rulers from pre-biblical era.

[wunksta]

This might interest y'all
https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/...-360tb-of-data

[Mormolyce]

I doubt that much of it will be, we will move on to new technologies. Much like CDs and cassette players. The bigger question is, how much will they care? They'll probably have the same amount of interest in us as we had for the Roman empire, or possibly less depending on how history plays out. How much do people care or remember about all of tribes and nation-states that existed 5,000 years ago? Most people can probably name 1-2 rulers from pre-biblical era.

I'm sure their historians will care, thing is will they archive all this stuff in some massive repository and keep it intact for thousands of years? Hard to say.

[Celista]

I'm sure their historians will care, thing is will they archive all this stuff in some massive repository and keep it intact for thousands of years? Hard to say.

My comment was about the general population, there are a handful of weirdos who are way into certain obscure periods of history at any given moment in time.

They might, but society is super fucked up at current and based on current events, it doesn't seem like we learn from our mistakes. Some info might be kept around so we know what we shouldn't do (again) in the future.

[Gaexion Ramza Beoulve]

In the year 3000 they will remember that Charlie Chaplin invented the airplane and then used it to drop a Nuclear Bomb on 7-11 thus kicking off the inevitable Franchise Wars.

America will be remembered as an empire devoted to a singular ideal, that being the right to eat sandwiches.

[ParanoiD84]

Not much our current history is fucking boring, not like the old days with conquest and discovery, epic battles and badass generals etc etc.

[Nerovar]

All the quality memes we shared.

All these memes. They'll be lost like tears in rain.

[zenkai]

We have a lot of threads that pop up here about ancient alien and long lost ancient civilization conspiracies as there seem to be something of an obsession around that.

What I find more interesting tho, is the question how much of the modern history (past maybe 2500 years) will be remembered 2 or 5 thousand years down the road.

One of my favorite book series growing up was Frank Herbert's Dune. Dune is set at some indeterminate point in the future by which most of what we consider modern history is largely forgotten or is spoken of and understood much the way we speak of the Trojan War today, mostly myths and conjucture and few reliable sources.

Recently I got into Warframe again, another game which is seemingly set so far in the future that there aren't even passing mentions to anything we consider modern history.

Considering how increasingly almost all the information we record and generate is stored digitally much could be lost either due to storage format obsolescence or due to things like cyber warfare, data corruption etc.

Not to mention the problem of the reliability of sources. What if the only things that would accidentally be preserved about an event would come from sources like Breitbart and Info Wars?

What will be remembered about the Holocaust or the Cold War in thousand years?

The world is ending in 12 years, so no one.

[Drutt]

We're in the first era where virtually everything of note will be preserved for future generations. Barring some kind of technological apocalypse that plunges us back into the dark ages, digital records aren't going anywhere and we'll continue to develop new methods for storing data more efficiently. Everything of note will be preserved as a result.

The issue of whether or not information will be accurately preserved is a different question entirely, of course.

[avitush]

I'd say it depends on quite a lot of things. All kinds of bad shit can happen in 2000 years.

[Aeula]

They’ll dig up some ancient meme in the vast wasteland of the internet on some obscure website that hasn’t seen a visitor in a thousand years and think it had some religious significance to us.

[unbound]

Not to mention the problem of the reliability of sources. What if the only things that would accidentally be preserved about an event would come from sources like Breitbart and Info Wars?

Then we know that the world entered a very dark phase where real history was systematically destroyed in favor of disinformation. It would likely be very hard to accomplish that considered how decentralized most of our information is today.

What will be remembered about the Holocaust or the Cold War in thousand years?

The Cold War will be nothing more than a footnote in history (if even that). How well do you know the Battle of Gaixia, or the Battle of Carrhae, or the Third Servile War? Those were some of the most important battles of their times. You can find out about them, but most don't really know the details. The first has to do with the founding of the Han Dynasty, the second signaled the end of the Roman Republic and the rise of the Roman Empire, and the third was the last of slave rebellions against the Roman Republic.

The Holocaust will potentially be remembered better simply because of the sheer numbers and percentage (about 80% of the Jews in Nazi Germany territory were exterminated). However, as we can easily see in today's world, most people are simply unable to learn from history, so the Holocaust may be viewed as a "quaint" event much like the Albigensian Crusade or the Wei–Jie War.

[avitush]

They’ll dig up some ancient meme in the vast wasteland of the internet on some obscure website that hasn’t seen a visitor in a thousand years and think it had some religious significance to us.

Now I'm picturing a bunch of archaeologists trying to figure out something like Dickbutt.