What people from modern times will be talked about in 1000 years?

Thelonious Monk

They might talk about us as being the generations that completely destroyed the natural world and its habitats and didn't do anything to stop climate change if that is upon us. The fact that until pretty much the 20th century much of the world was untouched and now we seem to be doing whatever we can to completely bulldoze all of nature so we can consume more and more will probably not be forgotten about for 1000s of years.

Capt'n Midnight

atilladehun wrote: »

Based on the Renaissance I'd say there'd be less firsts than you think and more broad cultural impact. Bill Gates for example put a computer in every home and workplace, Jobs in every hand.

There were technological advances in art but the names you know from the Renaissance used them in superb ways.

Same with first in space, the person who makes it broadly attainable or useful will get more credit.

Pop music and movies will be 20th century icons, this century hasn't defined itself yet.

There were home computers since the 1980's thanks to the Comodore 64 , BBC, Spectrum. Real usage didn't take off until everyone got internet access.

Bill Gates and Microsoft held back the adoption of the computer as we know them by at least a decade due to the limitations of Dos and early versions of windows compared to Atari and Apple. You could even get GEM for PC's.

Sharing of information is the big one. Language, songs and rhyming to make it easier to remember, writing, taking rubbings off carvings, printing with movable type... Once only really important stuff was stored. Now the problem is retrieval.

Tim and the interweb was a biggie. Like a lot of technologies it was of it's time, it would have happened anyway. But it was free so it got used unlike the offerings from AOL and others.

RobertKK

Taylor Swift.

I by accident came across the Roma Symphony Orchestra and and their classical music album of Taylor Swift songs.

Wibbs

Thelonious Monk wrote: »

They might talk about us as being the generations that completely destroyed the natural world and its habitats and didn't do anything to stop climate change if that is upon us. The fact that until pretty much the 20th century much of the world was untouched and now we seem to be doing whatever we can to completely bulldoze all of nature so we can consume more and more will probably not be forgotten about for 1000s of years.

Ehh.... no. Not quite, not even close. If you took a time machine back a thousand years to Europe, or Asia, even large tracts of the Americas, what you would see as a "natural" landscape would be mostly man made. Ever since the agricultural revolution...

Actually hang on, even before that: Australian aborigines used fire to drive animals from their habitats for food and wiped out a shedload of species and likely changed the environment itself. And today you'll have people mooning over "how how in touch they are with their environments" and all that noble savage nonsense. New Zealand was first settled by Polynesians in around the 11-12th century and by the time Europeans showed up a few centuries later the Maori had already made a load of species go extinct(native Hawaiians took out a load of bird species because they used their feathers as fashion). Indeed you can track modern humans movements outside Africa by how many and when species, particularly the megafauna, go extinct. Never mind previous human species.

Anyway, the agricultural revolution comes along and we really get to the oul terraforming. We clear forests, drain swamps, plant crops, divert water, kill off any predators that like to eat our food. Populations get much bigger, so land, water, wood become a major resources. One of the big reasons the Roman empire lusted after Gaul and Germania were the dense forests they had. I think it was Pliny who wrote more books about trees than anything else he's remembered for. They had started to run low on wood. Y'know around Easter when the telly will often show various flics on the life of Jesus and there he is wandering around a desert preaching the epistles to the apostles? Well in reality, back then it would have far more forested. The Cedars of Lebanon covered the place and now, well they don't. Hell the Amazon jungle was once covered in agricultural lands. Not so long ago we had lions in southern Europe. The list of civilisations that were affected by climate change, local and global and self induced or not is a long one.

It has been hypothesised and with good reason that the main reason we're not in an ice age today is because those humans changed the climate(we are long overdue one going on the previous cycles).

We've also lived through periods of warmer and colder times. When Newgrange was built Ireland was warmer. It was warmer when the Vikings first went to Greenland and at that time wine was being produced in England. Then we had the little ice age and that lasted into the 19th century. London was host to "frost fairs" on a frozen Thames.

Are we screwing with the planet today? Hell yes we are and more rapidly too, but our current efforts of green bin surface stuff will do bugger all to halt it. How do we halt it? reduce our population for a start. Yet economists and politicians tell us we need to have more people. And that brings us to our biggest problem; consumerism. No matter how much we "recycle" or drive leccy cars, it'll do bugger all in the long run, until there are fewer of us and we consume less stuff. There's a huge number of well meaning types so concerned about the environment, but who by a new phone every year, gadgets all over the place, wardrobes of clothes and a new car every three years, but feel better because it's not farting gases out the back*. The height of that daftness is your Leo DiCaprios and the like taking private planes to environmental conferences without a trace of logic or sense or for that matter shame. The fact is our great grandparents were "greener" than we are.







*and all the placcy packaging that we fire in the bin for landfill. Half of all plastics ever produced since plastics were invented have been produced since the year 2000. I know. Mad or wha?

Thelonious Monk

Wibbs wrote: »

Ehh.... no. Not quite, not even close. If you took a time machine back a thousand years to Europe, or Asia, even large tracts of the Americas, what you would see as a "natural" landscape would be mostly man made. Ever since the agricultural revolution...

Yeah well Europe has been f*cked for a long time, especially Ireland, but now we're destroying everything at rates never seen before when we should really know better. The Amazon and South East Asia for e.g. Australians and the original Kiwis killed all the megafauna I know, but they didn't do much else at least. I've also read Sapiens.

Wibbs

Thelonious Monk wrote: »

Yeah well Europe has been f*cked for a long time, especially Ireland, but now we're destroying everything at rates never seen before when we should really know better. The Amazon and South East Asia for e.g. Australians and the original Kiwis killed all the megafauna I know, but they didn't do much else at least.

Much else? They fundamentally changed the environment they found themselves in. Aboriginal burning practices that have left layers of carbon going back 1000's of years changed the climate. It's what humans do. Something BTW than previous species of humans didn't do. Neandertals were around for well over 200,000 years and not one species we know of went extinct because of them. They kept the prey/predator ratio stable(large number of prey, tiny number of predators). We come along are more gregarious and have more kids and they need feeding.

As I noted the Amazon centuries ago was once host to many areas of farmland and South East Asia had similar and back and forth. The Angkor Empire which is now enveloped by the jungle was at one time the most populous area on the planet. Something crazy like one in every fifteen people alive on the planet lived in and around Angkor. Ireland wasn't particularly bad until relatively recently. Like the middle ages. It was still mostly forested at that stage.

I've also read Sapiens.

It's been a while since I read it but I personally found Sapiens long on thumbnail entertainment value, quite short in a few areas of actual science, veering into ah here WTF on a few occasions. EG we were better as hunter gatherers than farmers. There's that old style noble savage thing again that has long fascinated the European mind.

Thelonious Monk

Thelonious Monk wrote: »

They might talk about us as being the generations that completely destroyed the natural world and its habitats and didn't do anything to stop climate change if that is upon us. The fact that until pretty much the 20th century much of the world was untouched and now we seem to be doing whatever we can to completely bulldoze all of nature so we can consume more and more will probably not be forgotten about for 1000s of years.

is the 20th C, all of it, the modern age? It is the modern age of the 2st C that is attempting to fix the problems caused by the last 19C and 20C. And we just get on with it without condemning them too much.

Thelonious Monk

Thelonious Monk wrote: »

They might talk about us as being the generations that completely destroyed the natural world and its habitats and didn't do anything to stop climate change if that is upon us. The fact that until pretty much the 20th century much of the world was untouched and now we seem to be doing whatever we can to completely bulldoze all of nature so we can consume more and more will probably not be forgotten about for 1000s of years.

You should move out.

Thelonious Monk

Thelonious Monk wrote: »

Greta Thunberg, for saving us all from imminent doom

She'll be forgotten in 50 years, never mind a millenium.

JasonStatham

It definitely be somebody related to Covid, or Brexit.

And i would hazard a guess that in 3020, the UK will still be commemorating the end of the second world war.

Beanntraigheach

Hitler

Amongst the general population I honestly think that's about it.
Important events from our time, like our first steps into space, will be vaguely recalled but the individuals involved (e.g. Gagarin, Armstrong) will be minor details.

A lot will depend on where the dominant culture sees it's roots - it may well be in East Asia in which case events and personalities in Europe/North America may be of little interest.

Wibbs

Beanntraigheach wrote: »

Hitler

Amongst the general population I honestly think that's about it.
Important events from our time, like our first steps into space, will be vaguely recalled but the individuals involved (e.g. Gagarin, Armstrong) will be minor details.

A lot will depend on where the dominant culture sees it's roots - it may well be in East Asia in which case events and personalities in Europe/North America may be of little interest.

The one thing that has kept growing over time is an increased dissemination of information to the "common man". Well along with taxes and an increasing influence of government, large and small and distances becoming smaller. If we take that further and what with talk of singularities and all that stuff, in the "future" and near future in some ways we'll be more informed, or at least have access to more knowledge, more government, less work of the traditional kind then in a thousand years time it seems logical that the average person will be somewhat unrecognisable to us today and will have all thoughts and knowledge to hand in an instant in a very much more expanded brain.

That's another thing that is a constant in humans, larger and larger groups that share much the same stories and knowledge. Today it's more localised but in the future it could be global. It's one of the things that makes us stand out among all the human species that ever existed. I noticed this over the years reading about early modern humans in Europe compared to Neandertals. With the latter what cultural things exist tend to only exist in one place, with one small group and the group a few miles away has differences and they don't seem to trade much as far as cultural items and novelty goes. Likely as a territorial thing.

We show up and that changes. If you look at our earliest art in paint and sculpture in Ice Age Europe the guys and gals in France and Spain and Germany have basically the same symbolism. One huge tribe, one network reaching across a continent and trading with each other. Neandertals were like a computer or phone with probably the same apps as us, but they had no internet, so innovation was massively stifled. We had all those things so if Joe came up with a better spear then Jane a continent away knew about it soon enough.

Think back when computers were just for "nerds", or a toy, or a glorified bookkeeper in business. Then they started to network and now those on the internet who are nerds are in the minority. If we take that to its conclusion...

That said one thing that futurists always or nearly always miss is something completely new that changes everything. And it's usually sitting in plain sight when they make predictions, it's just its time hasn't come yet. There is something out there today that you could look at and think "meh" that will be a gamechanger in 50, or even 20 years time. A 1000 years time? Lord knows.

Strumms

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

There were home computers since the 1980's thanks to the Comodore 64 , BBC, Spectrum. Real usage didn't take off until everyone got internet access.

Bill Gates and Microsoft held back the adoption of the computer as we know them by at least a decade due to the limitations of Dos and early versions of windows compared to Atari and Apple. You could even get GEM for PC's.

Sharing of information is the big one. Language, songs and rhyming to make it easier to remember, writing, taking rubbings off carvings, printing with movable type... Once only really important stuff was stored. Now the problem is retrieval.

Tim and the interweb was a biggie. Like a lot of technologies it was of it's time, it would have happened anyway. But it was free so it got used unlike the offerings from AOL and others.

First computer I had was when I was 10/11 my dad got an Amstrad CPC6128 through work... some colleague was a computer whiz and copied a load of games onto disks...commando, Barbarian, ghostbusters, Chase HQ and some tennis game... did the job (just about) until the mega drive came to being.

AMKC

Whenseptends wrote: »

Maradona

If you are going to put him here then I will say the legend Micheal Schumacher

Mr_Muffin wrote: »

Russell Brand will be known as one of the great philosophers.

Lol I would say if any cares to want to know who he was in a thousand years they will look at him as a great bullsh,utter.
Honestly do I think is a thousand years very few people from our time will be known. Some people if we are even that in a thousand years might care but not many. Then once again we might all be wrong and the could have a brain capacity far greater than ours with the help of computers maybe and maybe they will care about people that we considered great now but to them they might just be one part in a much bigger jigsaw.

Gregor Samsa

A lot is going to depend on how we memorialise people from this century. If the first city in the Moon is named a after Neil Armstrong, for instance, then the memory of him will survive for a long time. A number of chemical elements, including Einsteinium are named after 20th century scientists, so their legacy will live on at least with anyone who has to study the periodic table, If Trump had got his face added to Mount Rushmore*, he’d be known by tourists in 1000 years. The granite it’s made of erodes very, very slowly.

(* I know they can’t add another face, I’m talking conceptually)

Dufflecoat Fanny

Miley Byrne rolling in the hay with Biddy's cousin Fidelma

Plumbthedepths

Hitler, Mao and Stalin. History seems to place more importance on remembering genocidal maniacs.

s8n

s8n wrote: »

two girls one cup

no thanks ??

Munsterman12

2pac. Marty Morrissey. Megan markle.

Billcarson

The Healy Rae's.

Man Vs ManUre

Billcarson wrote: »

The Healy Rae's.

I think the story of their grey horse Peig will be written in the history books and talked about for generations to come.

Wibbs

Plumbthedepths wrote: »

Hitler, Mao and Stalin. History seems to place more importance on remembering genocidal maniacs.

True, mainly because they cause such upheaval and social change and often in usually short periods of time. Hitler went from "who?" to Most Evil Ever in not much more than a decade and literally changed the maps and demographics of Europe and we're still living in the wake of that. Not just in Europe either. He sounded the death knell for European empires, led to the creation of the state of Israel(which didn't do much for stability in ME, which was already as stable as a one legged stool), drove the economic expansion of America(and got people to the moon), the expansion of the Soviet bloc, the creation of the EU and lots of other direct and indirect effects.

Basically if you want to change human history and be remembered it seems it's far easier to do so if you're a murderous dickhead with a cause. You don't even have to die while doing it. Hitler is actually the outlier, Stalin, Mao, Franco, Pol Pot, Genghis Khan and the like died of natural causes.

LuasSimon

How Fine Gael can defend partition of our Island 100 years after we got three quarters of it free .

Galwayguy35

Plumbthedepths wrote: »

Hitler, Mao and Stalin. History seems to place more importance on remembering genocidal maniacs.

Seems to be the case all right, most people today would know who Caligula, Nero, Atilla the Hun and Genghis Khan are and these guys have been dead a long time.

People will still hate Bono.

Ekerot

Muhammad Ali

Invidious

Tyrants and tech entrepreneurs have the best shot, I think.

Wibbs

Galwayguy35 wrote: »

Seems to be the case all right, most people today would know who Caligula, Nero, Atilla the Hun and Genghis Khan are and these guys have been dead a long time.

And guys like Vespasian in Rome who brought stability and prosperity are mostly forgotten by the average person.

Another factor and we see this in drama is the baddies are more interesting, or we find them more interesting. So Darth Vader is a far more interesting character than Luke Skywalker, Iago far more interesting than Othello and writers give them better dialogue and narratives.

snowstorm445

Stateofyou wrote: »

Greta Thunberg. Future generations will look back on her message and conviction and condemn us for not doing enough at a time when we should have known better.

Not entirely sure about this one tbh. I certainly think the climate catastrophe of this century will be remembered by those informed by it. Not as sure with individual people involved in it, but I suspect they probably will be remembered in some way, particularly if they make a real difference in terms of changing minds.

But there have been plenty of child activists over the years whose appeal fades once they become adults. If Thunberg manages to make a career out of what she does, maybe by going into politics, she might have a chance, but honestly not sure what avenue there would even be for her in that case - becoming the leader of Sweden is nice, probably the best she could hope for, but not exactly a position to dictate policy to the world.

Beanntraigheach wrote: »

Hitler

Amongst the general population I honestly think that's about it.
Important events from our time, like our first steps into space, will be vaguely recalled but the individuals involved (e.g. Gagarin, Armstrong) will be minor details.

A lot will depend on where the dominant culture sees it's roots - it may well be in East Asia in which case events and personalities in Europe/North America may be of little interest.

Really? People very much remember historical discoveries first and foremost through names - Leif Erikson, St Brendan, Vasco da Gama, Columbus, Magellan, Cook etc. Discoveries often give way to naming, so that helps cement reputations. And most of their feats were fairly vague and unremarkable in comparison to Apollo 11. If mankind is space-based in 1000 years time, the first human beings to reach another world will almost certainly be remembered, a starting point for a new age etc.

Leg End Reject wrote: »

I think the queen has a good shot. I'm not sure the UK (or any other) monarchy will survive and she'll be remembered as the world's longest serving monarch.

I mean given the advances in anti-aging technology, it's very possible she could be far down the list in 1000 years. But who knows, monarchy might well be confined to history by then.

But there's something unique about the symmetry of the two Elizabeths in British history IMO. The first Elizabeth saw the beginnings of the English/British imperial history and the second Elizabeth saw the end of that period. I think it's far more likely she'll be remembered as overseeing Britain's decline as a world power, although unlike previous monarchs she can hardly be held responsible for that, it'll just be coincidence really.

Wibbs

Invidious wrote: »

Tyrants and tech entrepreneurs have the best shot, I think.

Good point with the techies Inv. We know of people like Johnny Gutenberg, the down on his luck goldsmith who gave us printing because he became the focus of a massive sea change in human history. Of the Asian inventors who came up with early forms of printing we know little, even Chinese people would struggle, because they didn't bring about that massive shift.

Usually the trick isn't to invent something, it's to make it useful and sell it in large numbers. EG Edison invented bugger all, but he knew how to shift units and advertise. I was having a kinda similar debate on another site that is a watch enthusiast site and a load of posters were absolutely convinced to the point of getting wound up(no pun...) that Rolex innovated nearly everything in the development of the wristwatch, yet of the big Swiss manufacturers it would actually be difficult to find one that innovated less. Yet everyone knows the name "Rolex".