[X] My Assistant

[djellison]

Hundreds of years from now (or longer), our descendants will have an incomplete picture of us,

I disagree.

Yes - we have a very poor understanding of anything other than recent history, but because the means to record, archive and document things that happened did not exist in the way it does today.

Doug

[mike]

I've never been entirely sure that paper and electronic devices will last longer than good old stone.. I guess someone will find out, eventually, or they won't, because they won't realize paper and electronic devices existed, don't you know..

[punkboi]

I've never been entirely sure that paper and electronic devices will last longer than good old stone..  I guess someone will find out, eventually, or they won't, because they won't realize paper and electronic devices existed, don't you know..

All I know is, it was INCREDIBLY LAME that NASA placed the CD that had the submitted names of people onboard the impactor of Deep Impact, not the spacecraft itself.

"Woohoo! My name went to outer space! Too bad it didn't last long 'cause the contraption it was on collided and was vaporized by a comet!!"

Thank you, NASA.

[ljk4-1]

I disagree. 

Yes - we have a very poor understanding of anything other than recent history, but because the means to record, archive and document things that happened did not exist in the way it does today.

Doug

And it still will not be complete, plus you cannot be certain that something won't happen to destroy many of our records - a totalitarian regime that wants to rewrite history in its favor ala 1984. With less than 30% of the current nations being only nominally democratic, this scenario is entirely possible.

Once again - a few disks that could contain so much information could be safely preserved on deep spacecraft for ages, and for the ages. I can't believe I have to keep arguing this.

Thank [insert deity here] Sagan and his people were around in the 1970s to at least get something of substance on our first interstellar probes.

[ljk4-1]

All I know is, it was INCREDIBLY LAME that NASA placed the CD that had the submitted names of people onboard the impactor of Deep Impact, not the spacecraft itself.

"Woohoo!  My name went to outer space!  Too bad it didn't last long 'cause the contraption it was on collided and was vaporized by a comet!!"

Thank you, NASA. 

Yes, showing once again that this whole Put Your Name on a Space Probe bit is just a publicity stunt designed to entice a public that barely knows what mission is going on where.

I can't count how many people I told about Deep Impact who had NO CLUE it even existed, let alone what its mission was. So much for the NASA publicity/education machine.

Want to guess how many people can tell you they know that a Japanese probe is orbiting a small planetoid and is set to land on it and return a sample to Earth?
You would think that would be big news, NASA or othewise, but silly me.

And if they were so gung-ho on preserving those precious signatures, it should have been on the flyby bus.

[punkboi]

Yes, showing once again that this whole Put Your Name on a Space Probe bit is just a publicity stunt designed to entice a public that barely knows what mission is going on where. 

I can't count how many people I told about Deep Impact who had NO CLUE it even existed, let alone what its mission was.  So much for the NASA publicity/education machine. 

Want to guess how many people can tell you they know that a Japanese probe is orbiting a small planetoid and is set to land on it and return a sample to Earth?
You would think that would be big news, NASA or othewise, but silly me.

And if they were so gung-ho on preserving those precious signatures, it should have been on the flyby bus.

Don't get me wrong-- I'm pretty grateful that NASA is giving us the chance to leave a mark, temporary or otherwise, on space probes that 90% of the public have absolutely no clue about...

But supporting what you said, NASA needs to send its publicity personnel to Hollywood to learn a thing or two about marketing.

And I didn't know about that Japanese probe (err, Hayubasa?) till maybe two days ago--when I read about it on the Planetary Society's website.

[punkboi]

And it still will not be complete, plus you cannot be certain that something won't happen to destroy many of our records - a totalitarian regime that wants to rewrite history in its favor ala 1984.  With less than 30% of the current nations being only nominally democratic, this scenario is entirely possible.

Once again - a few disks that could contain so much information could be safely preserved on deep spacecraft for ages, and for the ages.  I can't believe I have to keep arguing this. 

Thank [insert deity here] Sagan and his people were around in the 1970s to at least get something of substance on our first interstellar probes.

Oh, and let's applaud NASA for placing 616,400 names onboard the Cassini probe...which will eventually go the way of Galileo and take a nice fiery trip through Saturn's atmosphere at the end of its mission.

[dvandorn]

...NASA needs to send its publicity personnel to Hollywood to learn a thing or two about marketing. 

That's why James Cameron (who, among other things, made the film "Titanic") was a member of the panel that reported back to NASA about how NASA could get more public support for their programs. A very large part of the recommendations of the public hearings and investigations NASA put together to support Bush's Moon, Mars and Beyond initiative was to make use of Hollywood and other professionals to make people aware of the truly great things NASA is up to...

-the other Doug

[hendric]

I disagree. 

Yes - we have a very poor understanding of anything other than recent history, but because the means to record, archive and document things that happened did not exist in the way it does today.

Doug

True, but what is being recorded and archived? Think outside the box for a minute.
Are there any records being made of how we actually live our lives today? I'd argue NO. Of course, since we're living through it now, we might not be too interested in it, but somebody in the future might be. Future generations would only have a very limited view of how we lived. Would you want Seinfeld to define to future generations how you live today? Other than TV/movies, the only other repository of how we live is personal photos/movies, and even those aren't unbiased, complete stories about how our society operates today. Most are of vacations or birthdays/weddings etc. An anthropologist 100 years from now won't be able to examine how we live day to day, or have a skewed impression. What does an average person's life in China | US | Africa | etc look like? How long do they work? How do their relationships work? What do they wear? How do we treat our eldery, young, disabled, dead, etc. I have heard of a few projects with people who wear constantly recording cameras, but I doubt that gives an accurate representation of "us".

Along with this is the technology problem of keeping archived material "alive" when its viewer is no longer produced. Even NASA has problems with old archived material not being usable anymore because the technology to read it has disappeared. Very soon it will be impossible to purchase a new VCR. Unless everyone tranfers their old movies to DVD or digital, several decades of "us" will be lost.

What's the right answer? I dunno. Maybe we should create our equivalents of "stone tablets" using modern technology to etch photos into titanium plates or something. Or create a giant repository that is upgraded to each new technology as it appears, with several backups around the nation/world. Not likely to happen due to lack of economic return, but it a real shame our future generations won't get to know "us".

[mike]

Realistically no one ever really knows what it was like to be anyone but themselves, but you state well things that I've thought myself forever.

You don't write a book about the 'boring things' that everybody already knows about - the things that EVERYBODY does. It makes me wonder just how much we really know about Roman life, Greek life, and even life in Victorian times, etc. etc. etc. Of course, no one will ever know, because I am highly doubtful that time travel into the past will ever exist, but you see, that's just how things work. I dare say things are even set up that way on purpose, because, let's face it, there's not a whole lot to do, and if everyone knew that we were all just doing virtually the exact same things as cavemen.. well, actually, they wouldn't care, because, ultimately, sex is fun, food tastes good, and drugs are enjoyable.

[dvandorn]

In reality, more about how we live has been captured in the past 100 years than has ever been captured by previous generations. True, the media of storage are not as permanent as we might like, and most of the information captured is at least "flavored," if not actually skewed, depending upon the reason for the capture (news, entertainment, amateur photography, etc.).

What it comes down to, I guess, is what you define as "what it's like to live in these times." That's a really variable thing in the first place -- it depends on where you live, how much money you have, how well connected you and your family happen to be, etc., etc. In fact, "what it's like" varies from person to person, and I doubt we have the desire or the resources to record fine details about six billion lives.

The things that will give future generations a better idea of what life was like in these times are the cultural elements that are shared by larger and smaller groups. Those tend to be captured on film and video more often than not, if only because film and video are the primary means by which people experience the world beyond their own neighborhoods. So, since what we share as a people is already disseminated by film and video, it's already captured.

As much as we might not want future generations to judge us by episodes of Seinfeld, it's a fact that Seinfeld both disseminated and reflected elements of culture that are shared by millions of Americans. A small fraction of American culture, yes, but Seinfeld was a small fraction of the information captured during its run.

I have just recently celebrated my 50th birthday. I can tell you that American media has not always reflected the ways in which I have lived over that half-century, but it has provided the backdrop for the world in which I live. Future anthropologists will have worse things to look at than the volume of media stored from film and video.

I'm not the guy y'all probably would want to pick and choose what we should save for future generations -- but then again, no one else is, either. That's why we want a LOT of people making those decisions, and saving what seems important to them. That way, what is saved will better reflect who we were and what we went through...

-the other Doug

[mike]

The world is definitely becoming more and more information-dense, more so than it ever has in the past.. I agree with you, if nothing else we will have more of reality recorded than ever before - and who was it that said reality was entirely objective in the first place? I'd like to see them prove it..

At any rate, we're all nothing without the knowledge gained through the hard work of our billions of ancestors, and as our knowledge increases so too does the maturity of the human species as a whole, and who knows in what this may one day result, though complete control of the universe seems pretty dull, so uhh. How about 99% control, or we can induce our own randomness, oh wait, we already are, what am I talking about again, oh yeah, it would be cool to fly around on Venus wearing just a light suit. I'd settle for that, at least until I got bored of it..