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In 400 years from now, in the 25th century, how will be the work of a historian?
The research about the past before the 20th century will probably not be very different of the way the research is done today.
But how the historian of the 25th century will research the history from the 20th century onwards?
Will it be SUPER EASY to determine the details of facts that happened 400 years early?
How the internet will be used in the research? Will the internet become a primary source? How will they know what are true facts, and what is just trolling? For example: if someone posts a thread in 2015 saying that a Big Foot was spotted near his town, will a historian from the future take this Big Foot story as true?
Not all or even most of the current flood of stuff will survive into the next century, but lots and lots of it will. Far from the “digital dark age” that some were predicting only 10 years ago, the future will be awash in data from our era. Our LOLCats are safe for eternity.
This is my great fear, not only is there so much data much of it will be unusable unless there is some national center for antiquated computers. For gawds, sake I have Word files from 10 years ago that are unsupported and thus unreadable. What are historians to do with boxes of unconverted 3.5 floppy disc, or even DVD's when no one will have made an optical drive for more than 300 years?
SCSI, ATA, SAS, SATA, USB, USB 2. Thunderbold? Only gawd knows what they will have to contend with in the future. (By the way, the recent super hack of government files... the Office of Personnel Management is still using COBAL!) and if you are of an age where those abbreviations don't mean anything to you, then you might begin to understand the problem.
This is my great fear, not only is there so much data much of it will be unusable unless there is some national center for antiquated computers. For gawds, sake I have Word files from 10 years ago that are unsupported and thus unreadable. What are historians to do with boxes of unconverted 3.5 floppy disc, or even DVD's when no one will have made an optical drive for more than 300 years?
Data is digital, just a series of 1's and 0's, the media doesn't really matter. Old floppy discs and DVD's will degrade anyways...the important stuff will be in protected servers. Now if those servers get damaged or destroyed or wiped, that's another matter. But the same risk exists with ancient records.
Future historians will have to diferentiate from social media (the web), which is really were the glut of information is, and official documents. Social science is part of hsitory of course so that part will not be ignored, search algoritms (much more sophisticated then "google"ing) will take care of the glut, but historians focus on that bit of information that was unknown before - that forgotten letter from Napoleon to one of his girlfriends that puts an entire different spin on a battle, that document found in someone attic during an estate sale, the previously confidential documents held in a vault by the former Soviet Russia.
So, in some ways, I am more concerned that the element of mystery will be taken out of the role of the historian. Everything will be known. No longer will it be the guy visiting attics and dusty files or previously forbiddent vaults, but some geek behind a keyboard. I guess, in theory, some element of that will still exist - a guy can visit Clinton's house 500 years from now and find in some hidden crevice one of Bill's sex tapes on CD.
This is my great fear, not only is there so much data much of it will be unusable unless there is some national center for antiquated computers. For gawds, sake I have Word files from 10 years ago that are unsupported and thus unreadable. What are historians to do with boxes of unconverted 3.5 floppy disc, or even DVD's when no one will have made an optical drive for more than 300 years?
SCSI, ATA, SAS, SATA, USB, USB 2. Thunderbold? Only gawd knows what they will have to contend with in the future. (By the way, the recent super hack of government files... the Office of Personnel Management is still using COBAL!) and if you are of an age where those abbreviations don't mean anything to you, then you might begin to understand the problem.
As a former Cobol programmer, I say yeah!!!! I still wish there was a version which ran on a laptop.
The problem won't be an abundance of data but a lack. Because of potential litigation no one keeps diaries, correspondence files, or anything else a day longer than mandated by law.
Data is digital, just a series of 1's and 0's, the media doesn't really matter. Old floppy discs and DVD's will degrade anyways...the important stuff will be in protected servers.
Agh... there is important stuff on floppies, DVD's and totally unreadable file formats right now. Hoping that the "important" stuff is stashed on a server somewhere is nonsense unless history will consist of Facebook Status comments, and Tweets.
It will be harder, as more time passes there are more events and dates and stuff to keep track off.....
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