Future history

I often find myself thinking like a historian. That makes sense, because I majored in history in college, and I minored in religion (which includes a LOT of historical study) and now I'm working on a Master's degree in Biblical Studies -- also very historical in nature.

One thing that I learned in college was how true it is that the more you learn about history, the more you realize how little we actually know.

Sometimes I wonder what historians in the future will think about the early 21st Century. In a lot of ways, they'll be in much better shape, because things are documented in much more detail now than they were in centuries of the past. Things like recorded video and audio are just two examples of media that future historians will be able to watch and listen to in order to develop an idea of what life was like in "what was known in 2010 as the United States of America." In fact I read a story yesterday about an announcement that the Library of Congress is digitally archiving and preserving every public tweet that has been sent since twitter began a few years ago.

Thoughts like these cross my mind sometimes when I blog something or tweet it or facebook it. The other day I tweeted, "I'm excited that Thursday marks the last day those silly statues of liberty will be dancing on every street corner." You probably know exactly what I'm talking about, because you live in this country and you drive around occasionally, and you probably have some Liberty Tax Service locations nearby where you see the same kinds of people I do trying to promote the service, dressed as the Statue of Liberty and dancing around for attention. But think about it from the perspective of a historian who lives in the year 2350, or something like that. What does that statement mean?

Future historian: "Well, this was written only a decade into the 21st Century, when the Machine Age was still rather young. Perhaps there were robots built to look like the Statue of Liberty (after all, this was a fairly patriotic period for the United States -- the terrorist attacks of 9/11 had happened only 9 years earlier, and the country had just elected its first African American [okay, HALF African American] President). But why would they be dancing on the street corner? Well, we can see that the "Thursday" in question would have been the 15th of April, 2010. What was significant that happened on that day? Not really much. It was the anniversary of the day Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in major league sports. We also know that April 15th used to be known as 'Tax Day' in the U.S. when citizens would have to file taxes. Ah! So maybe these robots danced around as a signal of celebration for the end of the tax season? But the author says he's 'excited' that the dancing won't continue after a few days. We know that hanging out on 'street corners' during this period often signified the prostitution of women. Perhaps these dancing robots were seductive, scantily-clad women-robots? Yes! That must be it."

Now, this "future historian"'s conclusions sound kind of goofy to us, but think about a lot of our conclusions about life 500 years ago. Do you think present-day historians would sound pretty goofy to them? That's really the best you can do as a historian. Try to put together pieces of a puzzle, even though  the vast majority of the pieces are missing!

Anyway, these are the kinds of things I think about sometimes. You should take a look at some of the things on your own blog or facebook page and think about what historians of the future might conclude about them.