the Verdict of History (dept. of the deep future)

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ok i am just rereading sherlock holmes and i guess what intrigues me most is the detail of ordinary — yes slightly odd but basically ordinary — domestic or working life which is now VERY ALIEN AND STRANGE TO US.

(for example at one point watson mentions that there is a BELLBOY in the house where holmes then lives)

Anyway, forget all that: what I'm asking is, what is it that WE do all the time w/o thinking which our afterbears (?) will be puzzled by, or even mock

― mark s (mark s), Thursday, 27 February 2003 14:27 (twenty-three years ago)

(my usual answer is that the late 20th century wz obsessed with documenting itself, right down to the most lame-ass stuff: extreme case in point, the mounds of CCTV videos filled w.footage of empty corridors)

(but yr answer may be bettah)

― mark s (mark s), Thursday, 27 February 2003 14:28 (twenty-three years ago)

Mobile phones. Computers w/ screens. Neckties.

― Colin Meeder (Mert), Thursday, 27 February 2003 14:29 (twenty-three years ago)

ok but also you have to say how they have become weird in our children's children's eyetubes

― mark s (mark s), Thursday, 27 February 2003 14:32 (twenty-three years ago)

Mark S: you're right about documentation. But a) I'm quite consciously in favour of that, in general, and b) I'm not sure I see it abating in [the] future.

Definite articles.

― the pinefox, Thursday, 27 February 2003 14:35 (twenty-three years ago)

If the gas ever runs out all freeways (and [sub]urban planning around said) are going to seem ziggurattish.

― g.cannon (gcannon), Thursday, 27 February 2003 14:37 (twenty-three years ago)

Zoos.

― Sam (chirombo), Thursday, 27 February 2003 14:40 (twenty-three years ago)

Shoelaces.

― Andrew Farrell (afarrell), Thursday, 27 February 2003 14:40 (twenty-three years ago)

When our great-great grandchildren tell their grandchildren about 20th/early 21st-century farming practices, the kids will think that their grandparents are making up stories to try to scare them.

― J0hn Darn1elle (J0hn Darn1elle), Thursday, 27 February 2003 14:42 (twenty-three years ago)

"what are aminals, grandpaw? didn't they have soylent green in the old days? mmmm, soylent green"

― mark s (mark s), Thursday, 27 February 2003 14:44 (twenty-three years ago)

Shirts with collars
Broadcast TV
Record companies, as we know them today
The 5 day week
Smoking indoors
Recreational drugs proscribed
Movies in cinemas on actual film

― Minky Starshine (Minky Starshine), Thursday, 27 February 2003 16:33 (twenty-three years ago)

The idea of holding an object up to your face in order to communicate at a distance will seem even more bizarre than having to look at pictures and words on a screen -- concepts will be boomed directly into yer head.

The tie will grow smaller and smaller until it disappears completely by the 2417.

― Colin Meeder (Mert), Thursday, 27 February 2003 16:36 (twenty-three years ago)

Neckties.

Quite right. Kill them NOW.

Related to what John just said, meat-eating in general. Vegetarianism will make more and more intrinsic sense as time continues. This is admittedly not specifically something of this time frame and period, but meat consumption's extreme glorification in ads etc. is I think going to change radically.

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Thursday, 27 February 2003 16:36 (twenty-three years ago)

no neckties, no building on the footprints of some building, no sideburns.

ned, you're practically a nihilist.

― RJG (RJG), Thursday, 27 February 2003 16:39 (twenty-three years ago)

The tie will grow smaller and smaller until it disappears completely by the 2417

At which point it will be repalced by some equally useless cloth-style appendage used to signify formality. As by then we should be more enlightened and free of the remannts of Victorian morality, we should be a clothing-optional society (greenhouse effect willing!), the appendage of formality may well be a bandanna or something stuck to one's shoulder...

― Minky Starshine (Minky Starshine), Thursday, 27 February 2003 16:42 (twenty-three years ago)

"John turned up to the Christmas party without his bandana. I was *mortified*. Fortunately he has an enormous willy, so no-one complained."

― Andrew Farrell (afarrell), Thursday, 27 February 2003 16:45 (twenty-three years ago)

Everything we do will seem bizare to the third or fourth generation after this one, because industrialized civilization will have collapsed by then.

I like neckties though.

― fletrejet, Thursday, 27 February 2003 16:45 (twenty-three years ago)

Nuclear weapons. Everyone will find it hillarious that we had 'em, but never used them.

Scientology.

BBC Three.

Dustbinmen.

― Pete (Pete), Thursday, 27 February 2003 16:47 (twenty-three years ago)

Blogs. people in the future will say "what were they all about?"

― DV (dirtyvicar), Thursday, 27 February 2003 16:50 (twenty-three years ago)

ned, you're practically a nihilist.

Normally I would not be so proscriptive in life, but certain things get to me. ;-)

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Thursday, 27 February 2003 16:50 (twenty-three years ago)

porno mags: "what? you had to interact with a human to look at nay-nays when you were young?"

― Horace Mann (Horace Mann), Thursday, 27 February 2003 16:53 (twenty-three years ago)

Can I ask that the term 'nay-nays' also be abolished?

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Thursday, 27 February 2003 16:58 (twenty-three years ago)

Typing things in Internet chatrooms.

― Matt DC (Matt DC), Thursday, 27 February 2003 16:59 (twenty-three years ago)

I would think that in the future, "nay-nays" will be the accepted medical term.

― Horace Mann (Horace Mann), Thursday, 27 February 2003 17:01 (twenty-three years ago)

Can't wait to see what doctors of the future describe themselves as.

"We must test you for nay-nay cancer."

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Thursday, 27 February 2003 17:05 (twenty-three years ago)

"it looks grim, but we might be able to avoid a nay-nayectomy"

― Horace Mann (Horace Mann), Thursday, 27 February 2003 17:06 (twenty-three years ago)

i can't stop thinking about those haircuts in Zeffirelli's "Romeo and Juliet" (pretty much the only memorable thing about that movie eh zing). i've always thort that fossil fuel-powered cars will seem extremely Dickensian to our children's children. They'll watch the old movies - but big important question: how will they know what to watch? even our close-guarded faves will be long-buried trivia by then - and since most movies are littered with these clattery contraptions they'll laugh at them, and at us, and at our doubtlessly stupid haircuts

will watching TV ever seem as weird and quaint as those old photos of the family gathered round the wireless?

― Tracer Hand (tracerhand), Thursday, 27 February 2003 17:56 (twenty-three years ago)

"long-buried" in the sense of obsessively documented!!

― mark s (mark s), Thursday, 27 February 2003 17:58 (twenty-three years ago)

buried under documentation; how to know whether Die-Hard II or Lethal Weapon I is the one to watch?

mark your question gives an example of outmoded SOCIAL relations; am trying to think of current examples and am drawing a blank

― Tracer Hand (tracerhand), Thursday, 27 February 2003 18:00 (twenty-three years ago)

i think people 100-200 years from now will be overloaded w/art, esp. music and movies. The backcatalogue will just keep on getting bigger and bigger. I already have a hard time keeping up w/20th C. art that I don't think I'll ever experience all that I'd want to--there's just to many books, movies, and musics out there that interest me.
I can't imagine what it'd be like in 2203, considering that the amount of art produced and recorded/stored seems to be growing ea. year, i.e. more albums coming out now than in 1950.
We are only the second generation to have mass produced art and, therefore, only have 100 or so years to sift through.

― oops (Oops), Thursday, 27 February 2003 18:04 (twenty-three years ago)

haha in sherlock h., it says eg: "He came back into the room, perfectly costumed as a loafer" etc etc

Loafer = ??? If bloke who merely stands around rubbernecking, what, did they have a special UNIFORM?

― mark s (mark s), Thursday, 27 February 2003 18:04 (twenty-three years ago)

http://www.landsend.com/IMAGES/PRODUCT/77257.AD.02._.55.jpg

― Tracer Hand (tracerhand), Thursday, 27 February 2003 18:06 (twenty-three years ago)

we've got no more milkman, no more bellboy - but supposedly we're a "service-based economy" now, wtf??

fast-food restaurants --> potentially weirdsville

― Tracer Hand (tracerhand), Thursday, 27 February 2003 18:11 (twenty-three years ago)

one thing will surely possibly be ppl being paid to go to work in order to turn on TV screens to communicate all day with other ppl at "work" elsewhere, instead of actually working

― mark s (mark s), Thursday, 27 February 2003 18:14 (twenty-three years ago)

Pens, no one will bother writing in 200 years from now. There probably won't be any paper either.

― jel -- (jel), Thursday, 27 February 2003 18:15 (twenty-three years ago)

also all the seas will be bread and cheese

― mark s (mark s), Thursday, 27 February 2003 18:16 (twenty-three years ago)

And the greenhouse effect will have turned it into a quiche! Our descendents will scoff at our inedible oceans.

― Tracer Hand (tracerhand), Thursday, 27 February 2003 18:20 (twenty-three years ago)

(On the other hand they'll simply be scoffing theirs.)

― Tracer Hand (tracerhand), Thursday, 27 February 2003 18:21 (twenty-three years ago)

family rituals
producing children 'the natural way'
commuting
queuing in banks or post offices
subjecting ourselves to local chance and contingency in the search for sexual/emotional partners
skateboarding - one day it'll look as cool as the hula hoop
saving money to cover your own funeral
smoking anywhere other than in a little room on your own

― Snowy Mann (rdmanston), Thursday, 27 February 2003 19:00 (twenty-three years ago)

I hate quiche! I don't like the future!

(this will be the title of my new album)

― jel -- (jel), Thursday, 27 February 2003 19:01 (twenty-three years ago)

also all the seas will be bread and cheese

Num.

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Thursday, 27 February 2003 19:33 (twenty-three years ago)

Mortality

― Spencer Chow (spencermfi), Thursday, 27 February 2003 19:36 (twenty-three years ago)

what will scifi be like in the future?

― g.cannon (gcannon), Thursday, 27 February 2003 19:37 (twenty-three years ago)

well, since there will be neither science nor fiction, the probability of sci-fi existing in the future is tenuous at best

― oops (Oops), Thursday, 27 February 2003 19:39 (twenty-three years ago)

A variant of this question, focussing on morality, was asked by Tom here. It took me a while to find because I was convinced that I had asked it (maybe he stole it off me) and because it has a very unhelpful title.

― N. (nickdastoor), Thursday, 27 February 2003 20:04 (twenty-three years ago)

Walking, buses, trains, cars, etc. All out in favour of the personal jet packs that Tomorrow's World in the '60s promised I would have by now.

― Martin Skidmore (Martin Skidmore), Thursday, 27 February 2003 22:46 (twenty-three years ago)

all those shopping trolleys

― ducklingmonster (ducklingmonster), Thursday, 27 February 2003 23:08 (twenty-three years ago)

Archaeologists marking their digs with crisp packets is going to lead to some interesting questions

― ducklingmonster (ducklingmonster), Thursday, 27 February 2003 23:11 (twenty-three years ago)

There is a future?

― felicity (felicity), Friday, 28 February 2003 01:38 (twenty-three years ago)

there isn't yet but there will be

― mark s (mark s), Friday, 28 February 2003 01:47 (twenty-three years ago)

Stuff that won't be around?

Gas stations. Coal-fired power plants. Privacy. Cash transactions. Free public domain art.

― Chris Barrus (xibalba), Friday, 28 February 2003 02:00 (twenty-three years ago)

You put PINEAPPLE on your pizza?!!!

― James Blount (James Blount), Friday, 28 February 2003 02:09 (twenty-three years ago)

Sure do!

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Friday, 28 February 2003 02:18 (twenty-three years ago)

Californian! :^ p

― James Blount (James Blount), Friday, 28 February 2003 02:23 (twenty-three years ago)

a question to be asked is who is the “US” in mark’s opening statement:

“ok i am just rereading sherlock holmes and i guess what intrigues me most is the detail of ordinary — yes slightly odd but basically ordinary — domestic or working life which is now VERY ALIEN AND STRANGE TO US.
(for example at one point watson mentions that there is a BELLBOY in the house where holmes then lives"

These kinds of situations that mark sees as being so distant are alive and well in many places around the world. Personally, once I moved back to Addis, one of the hardest things was readjusting to a life that meant having household staff - guards, maids, drivers, cooks, laundry staff etc - and how that fit in with my personal beliefs on having ppl work for you. And though not in those precise 19th century forms (bellboy, housemaid, etc.) these work positions are still pretty common in most places around the world.

what ends up happening is that you have these odd juxtapositions of "bellboys" and 'entrepeneur bellboys with mobiles' and similar combinations of this semi-19th century household world (as called up in Holmes)combined with present-day positives & negatives.

I'm not really arguing with mark (‘coz his original question makes perfect sense to me), but more with a general assumption on ILX that the experience of the US/UK/NZ posters is the norm)

(I need to think (and post) about this when more awake)

― H (Heruy), Friday, 28 February 2003 02:24 (twenty-three years ago)

H makes a v.good point obv: really what i am asking abt is set-ups we take for granted which wd look strange to others, and this needn't be time-connected of course

― mark s (mark s), Friday, 28 February 2003 11:16 (twenty-three years ago)

Unthinking Eurocentrilxism.

― Pete (Pete), Friday, 28 February 2003 12:13 (twenty-three years ago)

"us" = ILX posters, which is overwhelmingly people from these anglophone western countries.

― Martin Skidmore (Martin Skidmore), Friday, 28 February 2003 13:55 (twenty-three years ago)

Don't forget the lurkers, Martin

possibly 10000s of Venezuelans biting nails at the outcome of the flatulence thread

― Tracer Hand (tracerhand), Friday, 28 February 2003 14:12 (twenty-three years ago)

w/r/t to Colin's first post I am in the future and I think mobile phones are silly so he is vindicated.

― Amateurist (amateurist), Friday, 28 February 2003 16:49 (twenty-three years ago)

Amateurist, what about the nay-nay's?

― Horace Mann (Horace Mann), Friday, 28 February 2003 17:01 (twenty-three years ago)

A: You know, son, when I was a kid homeless people didn't have Segways.
B: Really? What did they do?
A: They just sat in doorways and panhandled in place.
B: That must have been awful.
A: Well, President Bushbot changed all that.
B: What about before there were Segways at all?
A: What do you mean?
B: Before they were invented. Did people just, like, walk?
A: For multiple blocks? Think about it, son: that's ridiculous.
B: I guess you're right.

― sport-utility segway (nabisco), Friday, 28 February 2003 17:18 (twenty-three years ago)

Also per other thread I'm sure our rudimentary attempts at hygiene will seem clumsy, repellant, and disrespectful to future generations.

Also now that I think about it someone will likely come up with some awful "solution" to homelessness that will leave future-people slightly agog at the idea that humans used to wander around major cities living so marginally. (I say "awful" because I think it's completely natural for someone to occupy that position in any society, and current methods of trying to control it tend to revolve around very unnatural attempts to suppress them. But who knows, maybe there's a positive solution.)

Also hello H. You know, I can't tell you how long it took me in Addis to start thinking of family-type "service" as actually genuinely "service" and not just particularly helpful family members. (On certain levels -- the "guest house in the back" level -- it almost does seem to work on a family-consolidation level.)

― nabisco (nabisco), Friday, 28 February 2003 17:30 (twenty-three years ago)

I think the odds are that the big majority of lurkers on a board 99% in English are probably from anglophone countries too.

― Martin Skidmore (Martin Skidmore), Friday, 28 February 2003 18:41 (twenty-three years ago)

Well even the nature of homelessness has changed pretty drastically over the last 80 years. See Orwell's Down & Out in Paris and London (my fave Orwell).

― Horace Mann (Horace Mann), Friday, 28 February 2003 18:46 (twenty-three years ago)

Martin don't spoil my fantasy!

― Tracer Hand (tracerhand), Friday, 28 February 2003 21:41 (twenty-three years ago)

carrying small bits of paper and metal around

― Snowy Mann (rdmanston), Saturday, 1 March 2003 15:34 (twenty-three years ago)

"Mm, I dunno, I've tasted cow."

― Cozen (Cozen), Saturday, 1 March 2003 16:05 (twenty-three years ago)

(off topic: the one time I took LSD, I was obsessed with documenting the experience somehow, to the point where I missed out on much of what could have been the experience. I think that reflected that period of my life, however. Maybe the 20th century has been one collective acid trip coupled with an obsessive desire to document?)

― Rockist Scientist, Saturday, 1 March 2003 17:56 (twenty-three years ago)

two months pass...

boy we sure did manage to accept the comforting illusion of tv-watching as social activity that even the most poorly recorded/scripted/played canned laughter (or fauxhaha as it will come to be known) attempted to provide

― mitch lastnamewithheld (mitchlnw), Monday, 26 May 2003 21:42 (twenty-three years ago)

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