What will the future think of us?
“Although some historians might object that the Bert Is Evil web site is of little historical significance, even traditional historians should worry about what the digital era might mean for the historical record.”
I believe we discussed a little about this in class the other day on how we might preserve our own history at the dawn of the internet age. The whole concept of wondering how the future will look back and think of us has been a question of societies for a very long time but with the existence of the internet now the situation gets much more complex and quite honestly a little bit hilarious. What will historians in 100 years look back and find? What inferences will they make about our culture from looking at lolcats and youtube videos. They might think that Gungnam Style is a cult following after seeing thousands of people dance to it in Seoul South Korea. The possibilities are endless.
Talking about these kinds of things right now seems like a joke but when time forgets the fads and fashions of today how will people look at and understand them in the future. In the case of Evil Bert historians may think that he was a propaganda machine of Osama Bin Laden to brainwash our children if we were to suddenly loose all record of Sesame Street for whatever reason. Luckily I think we wont be remembered wholly as a society that was obsessed with funny cat pictures thanks to sites like wikipedia. Better yet, if the internet were to suddenly disappear one day all that silly stuff would be almost gone forever.