Was having an email conversation with a friend the other day, just one of our typical random and far ranging convo’s, when she mentioned that after seeing the Tutankhamun exhibition a while back, she wondered what archaeologists would find of ours in 3000 years time. This set off a bit of a convo re the issue and left me pondering the topic for some time.
We all visit museums and exhibitions and marvel at objects and ideas from yesteryear but do most people ever wonder about the legacy we’re leaving for future generations? There’s certainly lots of talk about the legacy we’re leaving in terms of the environment but what about in other ways? We live in a society that prides itself on progress and technological advancement. Goods are mass produced and often designed to have a short life span. For other goods, their life span is short due to tech advances making them obscelete as we look for the next shiny and fast gadget which promises to make our lives better.
Will anyone 3000 years from now marvel at what we left behind? Will there actually be anything from now which is capable of surviving 3000 years to be unearthed and put on display? In particular I wonder about our knowledge/information. As I am part of the so called information profession I know it is grappling with the issue of preserving our knowledge/information as I write this. Academics much smarter than me are debating and musing about how best to preserve what we know, not just that which is in hardcopy but particularly that which is in electronic forms. I’m sure my thoughts on this matter have already been pondered and researched by wiser heads than mine, however I do wonder if these wiser heads sometimes focus on a too narrow picture.
The issue of preserving knowledge/information that originates in electronic form came up more than a few times during my uni studies, but an aspect which didn’t seem to attract attention was who decides which info should be kept. There was lots of talk of migrating electronic formats and converting hardcopy to digital. There also seems to be a presumption of preserving that which is viewed as scholarly or literary but what of other knowledge/information out there? How many recollections, ponderings, discoveries etc have been recorded by people just like you and I in their personal diaries, on webpages or on blogs? Will efforts be made to capture this information or is it just viewed as dross to be discarded at whim?
Isn’t the everyday thoughts etc of you and I just as important as great literary works or scholarly articles? Afterall which provides a better picture of our current society? Something which I think illustrates this point is Facebook. I’ve not noticed any push to preserve its content but at present there is meant to be approx 600 million profiles on it. What a snapshot of the world all those profiles would give in future years. Of course the logistics of capturing something like Facebook is way beyond this post but the concept is certainly food for thought I think.
Maybe the problem lies in that the so called experts are so busy trying to work out the how that they overlook the what. Or maybe they’re blinkered by the fact that as experts they belong to the literary and scholarly worlds so don’t figure anything else to be important. Or maybe the answer lies in looking at the how and what together or on not going for a ‘one size fits all’ approach as it will be just like ‘one size fits all’ clothing in that it ends up usually fitting no one.
My wish is for a balanced view of my world to be left for future generations and to me that means capturing the available information/knowledge from a variety of sources and fields, from layperson to expert. I’ve always looked at life as having 2 types of intelligence – ‘street smarts’ and ‘academic smarts’ – and as such any knowledge/information preserved should be an even mix of the 2.
