For fun and leisure, many of our contemporaries engage in modelling historical and/or mythical past times, and some even manage to engage in this behavior at a goodly profit.
It is, therefore, a safe bet that future generations will likely engage in similar behavior, perhaps seeing romance where we experience dull and mundane minutiae.
Instead of having these future participants guess at what our day-to-day behavior is like, the society's immediate goal would be to provide succinct guidelines for how different levels of different social castes dealt with one another, what an average day of various worker-bee types consisted of, which much documentation of variances, and the thought which drives such current behavior, so that future generations will better be able to realize their characterizations of the denizens of today.
Sure, we have more documentation about our day-to-day lives going on on the planet than at any previous point in history, but what I'm envisioning is an enclave dedicated to a particular kind of documentation which would be useful to particular future leisure interests. The society would document in particular perception and motivation, with a particular eye to meeting the needs of future roleplayers specializing in this era.-- Soterios, Mar 08 2005 Year 2500: Internet Stock Market Bubble Reenactment Society Year_202500_3a_20In...enactment_20SocietyStrikes me as similar, but then again I don't really understand what the author is talking about. [waugsqueke, Mar 11 2005] I wonder what future generations will make of the half-bakery?
Gets a croissant though, if only for reminding me of the amusement park in Futurama about life in the 20th Century....-- RichieRich, Mar 08 2005 Not much RichieRich. I doubt if they will be bothered with type in the future.-- mensmaximus, Mar 08 2005 Qualifying cultural entry: The only movie ever to put an SUV in a starring role, Jurassic Park.
Okay, I don't get the idea.-- reensure, Mar 08 2005 /An enclave dedicated to a particular kind of documentation which would be useful to particular leisure interests/ I believe they are called 'fetish' websites.
Anyway, what else is the internet for? Are you saying that one day all the computers in the world will crash, losing millions of gigabytes of data, so we're all going to have to start from scratch, and I'm pretty sure that the internet is going to last for a long, long time, and if it's replaced, most websites will make it through the ages. Plus, what if someone, in the future, discovers the halfbakery and think of it as a chronicle of innovation, despite our somewhat primitive technology?-- froglet, Mar 08 2005 you are basing this on the ungrounded assumption that someone will care.-- ato_de, Mar 08 2005 Ato, your point is somewhat vague. This entire website is based on a similar assumption, yet it has flourished for more than five years. As I said in my description, a safe bet.-- Soterios, Mar 08 2005 What else is history for? Somebody happens to care, I'm not sure who, but they must be out there!-- froglet, Mar 08 2005 How is this different than "time capsules"?
And aren't time capsules one of the least useful historical referrences?
With a million bloggers, how would future historians find your stuff amongst the already existing universe of documentation of daily life?-- sophocles, Mar 10 2005 It's not just about the blogging, or what might be available in historical annals. In the present, despite a plethora of general information on various aspects of human history, it is apparent that people participating in rennaisance festivals and groups like the Society for Creative Anachronism are simply guessing at some aspects of their historical modeling.
My idea for this Society is that it would be peopled by individuals who are attracted to things like Live Action Role Playing, and would thus be in a unique position to provide infomration particular to modelling what will eventually be past behavior.
The information could carry over and be held separate from the mass of general historical data because it would be passed on from those who would like to have access to such data about our past, to those future users who will wish to roleplay this period in history as their past.-- Soterios, Mar 10 2005 hmm... ok. I see the difference now. It's the "society" part that's key, more than just a data archive. I'm not sure how viable this is, but then again I'm not the type to go to renaissance fairs.-- sophocles, Mar 11 2005 The moment you fabricate an element of society, it is romanicized. This is a good thing, just so you know I'm not knocking the idea. History is making moments out of monotony... I can envision a future where there is so much time and energy left to the individual, that entire masses will become consummed by the fruitless rituals such as you suggest.
<hasty speculation> Is there always more culture yesterday? Like a second law of sociodynamics, cultural entropy always increases. </hs>-- daseva, May 10 2005 ///<hasty speculation> Is there always more culture yesterday? Like a second law of sociodynamics, cultural entropy always increases. </hs>///
I'd tend to disagree with that. I think culture is practically a function of population growth. The only way culture--in some form--would decrease is if the population were significantly decreased and people had to turn back in large numbers to just getting food on the table (which plenty in the population still do).
Now, you may wish to further speculate about the 'quality' of culture, but even that is in the eye of the beholder.-- Soterios, May 10 2005 reminds me of MIT''s very recent time traveler seminar thingy. The idea being that if time travelers existed they would know to visit at that particular event.
Of course we all know that would completely break all time lord rules. Sheesh.-- SpocksEyebrow, May 10 2005 That supposition they made about there only needing to be one time travel convention didn't take into account the likelihood that time-travellers might be an elitist lot prone to snubbing such gatherings. Whenever they might occur.-- Soterios, May 10 2005 Ahh, true. Fuck haste, it never works.
But, as there is a measure of the disorder of a system, so, too, there may be a measure of order in a culture. The more order, the more tradition, inevitably, the more culture. Order could be defined to include any ritual that is recognized on a socially pervasive scale. My hasty point was then, that modern cultures have been waning on the ritual side of things.
Of course, order could equate also to socially controlling rules and law, which has been fluctuating but growing quite nicely for some time now. Now, is government a facet of culture?
This culture word is starting to freak me out.-- daseva, May 10 2005 I'm picturing kind of a ren fair of the future, with crafts and food vendors, costumes, cults and rituals.
Having worked a summer at main gate, I can imagine how weird it would be.-- normzone, May 10 2005 I think government is a facet of civilization more than it is of culture.
When I think of culture, I tend to think of the conventions, rituals, and totems that separate us from the rest of the beasts. Culture, like civilization, is partially an abstraction where we assign arbitrary meanings to symbols and behaviors. I see 'culture,' as opposed to 'civilization,' as more flexible in how we can interpret it, the arbitrary aspects of 'civilized behavior.' Government is more meat-and-potatoes, hard management of resources, in general, but can be turned to the needs or desires of large numbers of people with 'cultural agendas.'
I don't know, maybe it is all one.-- Soterios, May 10 2005 This could be a wonderful opportunity for us to prank our descendants. Use your imagination, we could have people scratching their asses and wondering 'WTF????' generations hence.-- spacer, May 11 2005 Little do we know, this joke has already been played on us. Dinosaurs? Hehe...right....-- SpocksEyebrow, May 11 2005 random, halfbakery