Saturday, March 9, 2013

Future History Class

Do you remember taking history in school?  Do you remember how much history there seemed to be even though a lot of the past was only partially recorded?  Do you also remember how boring that class was?  Well, if you thought history class sucked when you were a student, imagine how much students will have to learn a hundred years from now.

Not only will the kids of future have an additional hundred years of history to have to study, but that additional hundred years will be so meticulously documented that there will be way too much information to process that it will be impossible to make ends of anything covered in class.  Look at it this way, Beyonce lip-singed the National Anthem at the President's Inauguration last month and there were more stories written about that than there are recorded accounts of Alexander the Great's entire life.  That's right, more people had a take on an overrated* performer's flub of the National Anthem then there are recorded stories of one of the greatest conquerors in world history.  My problem with this is that 50 years from now, people will still be teaching about Alexander the Great but no one will still remember Beyonce.

So, maybe that's what it really boils down to - will kids really have that much harder of a time learning history in the future because history between now and then will be recorded better than in the past?  Or will kids have it exactly the same because if you really think about it, other than 9/11 has there really been anything worth putting in a history book since the end of the Vietnam War?  And no, the life and times of Justin Bieber will not make history books no matter how hard tween girls try.

* I consider someone to be overrated when I can't name more than 3 of their songs/movies/works of art/etc and in the case of Beyonce, I can name one.  Austin Powers in Goldmember and that doesn't even count b/c she was so terrible in it.

"We don't even know who made the Sphinx, but if it were made today, we would have a million people making fun of it on Tweeter."

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