Vanishing History
History is a funny thing. How much do you really know about the land you live on? What happened there fifty years ago? A hundred? A thousand? The land itself has a way of swallowing up its secrets.
And what of the people? Each of us has lives filled with things that are important to us. Look around at the people at the mall, at the grocery store. Every one of them has things that are important to them, that fill up their lives too. With all this going on, how is it that we all read the same headlines? See the same wedding pictures of the same people as though we care about them? What makes them important to the rest of us? They have no real impact in our lives.
How much do you know about what your father did? What filled his life? Or your grandfather? Or his grandfather? How far back do you have to go before every single fact about a person's life is completely forgotten? A life filled with things that were important to them, every one of those things lost forever.
Think of 5000-6000 years ago. How many people's names have survived? Plato. Socrates. Homer. Alexander. Jesus. Muhammad. Buddha. Odysseus. Cleopatra. We remember few names, and even fewer of their accomplishments. Each of these have one or two events they were involved in, and that's all we remember, for many lives filled with important things. How many other names have been lost completely? More than I care to imagine.
All this history is being lost, each day, each time a person dies without passing on everything they've done, everything they've worked for. And why? Because we're too busy to listen, and too selfish to care.
Even our own lives get lost. Our letters have turned to emails, that once read are discarded, never to be found again. Our diaries have turned to blogs, that due to an overdrawn account, or a lack of readers, are discontinued and the information contained is forgotten. Our photographs have turned to swirling colors on a computer screen, lost to failing hard drives and disintegrating optical media.
I propose a solution. We need to preserve our lives, our knowledge. Not because we care, or because our children will care, but because their grandchildren may. History should not be written by the victors, but by the participants. Even if they vanish, their lives should live on.
We need a massive internet archive of our lives. A place to share ourselves, our memories, our knowledge, our opinions. We need this backed up in several places, in different medias, several hard copies, several digital. This needs to be worldwide, connecting people in a way never before accomplished. If a particular teacher struck you a certain way in school, write about it. If your father has given good advice, put it down. If it was bad advice, write about that too. If you loved your first car, talk about that. If you loved an oak tree as a child, tell where it was and why. If every life these things and people have touched mentions them, they will in this way show what effect they've had on this world, showing their fingerprint on humanity. This time of forgetting the past is over. We need to remember. Our future needs to remember us. We now have the technology to make everyone immortal, so all our names will live on, and not just our names, but our lives as well.
I propose the largest database ever created. Larger than Wikipedia. Larger than Project Gutenberg. Larger than Archive.org. Larger even than Google, Yahoo! or Microsoft have conceived. This is a huge undertaking, and someone needs to do it. Now. Before any more information is lost. I don't have the money or resources to complete this project, but someone does. And this needs to be done.
And what of the people? Each of us has lives filled with things that are important to us. Look around at the people at the mall, at the grocery store. Every one of them has things that are important to them, that fill up their lives too. With all this going on, how is it that we all read the same headlines? See the same wedding pictures of the same people as though we care about them? What makes them important to the rest of us? They have no real impact in our lives.
How much do you know about what your father did? What filled his life? Or your grandfather? Or his grandfather? How far back do you have to go before every single fact about a person's life is completely forgotten? A life filled with things that were important to them, every one of those things lost forever.
Think of 5000-6000 years ago. How many people's names have survived? Plato. Socrates. Homer. Alexander. Jesus. Muhammad. Buddha. Odysseus. Cleopatra. We remember few names, and even fewer of their accomplishments. Each of these have one or two events they were involved in, and that's all we remember, for many lives filled with important things. How many other names have been lost completely? More than I care to imagine.
All this history is being lost, each day, each time a person dies without passing on everything they've done, everything they've worked for. And why? Because we're too busy to listen, and too selfish to care.
Even our own lives get lost. Our letters have turned to emails, that once read are discarded, never to be found again. Our diaries have turned to blogs, that due to an overdrawn account, or a lack of readers, are discontinued and the information contained is forgotten. Our photographs have turned to swirling colors on a computer screen, lost to failing hard drives and disintegrating optical media.
I propose a solution. We need to preserve our lives, our knowledge. Not because we care, or because our children will care, but because their grandchildren may. History should not be written by the victors, but by the participants. Even if they vanish, their lives should live on.
We need a massive internet archive of our lives. A place to share ourselves, our memories, our knowledge, our opinions. We need this backed up in several places, in different medias, several hard copies, several digital. This needs to be worldwide, connecting people in a way never before accomplished. If a particular teacher struck you a certain way in school, write about it. If your father has given good advice, put it down. If it was bad advice, write about that too. If you loved your first car, talk about that. If you loved an oak tree as a child, tell where it was and why. If every life these things and people have touched mentions them, they will in this way show what effect they've had on this world, showing their fingerprint on humanity. This time of forgetting the past is over. We need to remember. Our future needs to remember us. We now have the technology to make everyone immortal, so all our names will live on, and not just our names, but our lives as well.
I propose the largest database ever created. Larger than Wikipedia. Larger than Project Gutenberg. Larger than Archive.org. Larger even than Google, Yahoo! or Microsoft have conceived. This is a huge undertaking, and someone needs to do it. Now. Before any more information is lost. I don't have the money or resources to complete this project, but someone does. And this needs to be done.
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