This was a random thought that occurred to me in the shower this past weekend and I’ve been mulling it over ever since. As an archaeologist who now works with cutting-edge robotics (well, I work with the people who design cutting-edge robotics), it’s probably no surprise that I find myself contemplating the past and future on a regular basis.
Take, for example, the technology that has been developed in the past 100 years. From airplanes to space flight, television to the internet, the Ford Model T to the Tesla Model S, these advances have completely shaped how we live in the present. What will the next century bring? Can developments keep up their current pace? Will the technology of today be viewed as primitive as we look upon the horse and buggy or the Victrola?
“The past is a foreign country, they do things differently there.” This oft-cited opening line from L.P. Hartley’s The Go-between sums up the necessity for historical interpretation. Trying to understand how people in the past would have lived and how they viewed the world becomes an act of translation, from modern-day sensibilities to a past that is glimpsed through an incomplete record of artefacts and writings left by those in power. At times this can be incomprehensible as we look back at injustices, from slavery and colonialism to segregation and sexual discrimination, and we wonder how they could have been allowed to occur.
Yet what will those who are looking back from the vantage point of 2117 or beyond make of us? Will they wonder at the fondness for posting photographs of meals on Instagram? Will they mourn the destructive decisions that led to the loss of wilderness and rainforests in the same way we view those who destroyed the dodo and the passenger pigeon? Will they struggle to understand our current political decisions, or still be living with the fallout from it?
Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris plays with the idea that there is no true “Golden Age”: the lack of antibiotics was enough to encourage its protagonist to remove his rose-tinted spectacles about the roaring ‘20s. While I agree with this dismissal of nostalgia for an imagined ideal past, we cannot forget that tomorrow is shaped by today. Shouldn’t we do everything in our power to ensure that those looking back at us understand and respect the decisions we make, and the actions we take, so that their present can be a better one?
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