It was always fun to think "oh, this will never happen again."
When I was growing up, it was always interesting to see people depicted throughout major events in history. Social studies textbooks captioned pictures of people standing in breadlines as representative of the Great Depression. US Government textbooks showed pictures of past Presidents during times of war, negotiating with world leaders, signing what looked to be important documents. Famous photos of world events tend to stick in our heads as iconic images of times that changed history.
What’s interesting is to be living in those times and not really know what to make of it. When great-great-grandchildren look at digitized textbooks on individual hand held education devices 100 years in the future (what, me, cynical?), will they see pictures of the Republic Windows & Doors sit-in? Or Obama’s youtube press releases? Or droves of people exiting their workplace, pink slips in hand? What images will be representative of these times? Or of the past 8 years? Which countries will have taken the place of the US as imperial world powers? What will have happened in the next few days, weeks, years to destroy what is now here, or be put in place to help stop the bleeding?
It’s hard to think of the day to day events that occurred to lead into the depression, or major world wars. Moreso, it’s eerie to think of the calm before those storms. The normal, average thoughts that people had the day before tsunamis, hurricanes, bombings, building collapses, layoffs, homelessness.
When history is being made all around us in monumental ways, what do we make of that?
Filed under: Culture, Reflections, future, layoffs, obama, recession, republic windows & doors, uncertainty
Presently Jon (I) works (work) as a web coordinator for a non-profit organization in the suburbs and attends a city college downtown. Spending as much time as he does in the suburbs, sometimes he has to shed the reality of polos and khakis. On those days, he rides his bike.
I like this. I’ve often wondered about these things myself. What will be remembered? On a more trivial note, sometimes when I’m struck crazy fashion of past decades I wonder what we’ll grimace about when we look back in five or ten or fifteen years. Did we really wear that? Did we really give things (and people!) names like that? Uplift High? Really?
I read this book when I was very young. Ever since, I do wonder what will last… and what will be understood.
Do you think there will be a time after the internet? How does something like archive.org change the future of archaeology?