Edinburgh-based science fiction author Charlie Stross has a fascinating article on the BBC’s website today, discussing the use of computing technology as an external memory aid, the mass of our mixed media recording more events than even before and the impact this may have for future historians. As someone who is fascinated by history it is quite interesting to consider, as Charlie suggests, how well documented life now is. Yes, we have the downside – the surveillance society for example – but imagine you are a future historian 200 years hence and the amount of media material recorded at the time of the events and people you wish to write about which could be available. Then compare that to modern-day historians writing about events from only 200 years ago, piecing together fragments from relics, a few official documents (if any) or if they are very lucky from some journal entries.
“For the first time ever, they’ll be able to know who was where, when, and what they said; just what words were exchanged in smoky beer halls 30 years before the revolutions that haven’t happened yet: who it was who claimed to be there when they founded the Party (but didn’t join until years later): and where the bodies are buried.”
If you’ve read Charlies’ excellent novels then you have probably come across some of these ideas already, but it is intriguing to see them laid out like this. If you haven’t read (the award-winning) Charlie yet then you should. I’ll admit I am biased having known him for years and been reading his work since before the first novel was published, but he has built a formidable reputation in SF&F circles in recent years as an author to watch for in the genre, so it isn’t just my opinion (if you are looking for a very enjoyable and accessible jumping on point for the Stross newbie try his recently published Glasshouse) and any collection of modern SF has to have some of his work in it. Of the article I can see only two potential problems with future historians accessing our multitude of electronic media to build a picture of events and people – the first being compatibility (I’m thinking of the famous electronic Domesday Book the BBC sponsored nationally back in the 80s, which was safely recorded onto now obsolete equipment and a long-disused computer system) and the second and more worrying one that civilisation collapses long before then. Still, future history of the past, the sci-fi future – a subject we geeks do like to think about. Oh and the ’smoky beer halls’ will probably all be non-smoking, but that’s nit-picking. This link, by the way, comes courtesy of the nice, new Orbit blog.
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