If the records survived, they might not need anything from you, because they’ve already watched it all on video. But, maybe some of them would be interested to see it in person once. Even if we know how warriors fought 3000 years ago, it would still be interesting to see a true expert warrior using their weapons in a way that took a lifetime to master.
If the records didn’t survive, you might be a valuable person to study for a while, but it might quickly get tiring to basically be a sideshow performer, there to delight the people who think of you as this ultra-primitive thing that’s nearly an animal.
I would bet it would be pretty frustrating for most people after a while. You’d have this mental image of yourself as a sophisticated, modern person who was respected by his/her peers. Suddenly, you’d be living in a world where people around you might be struggling to contain their disgust. Things that are normal to you like eating meat or peeing in a toilet might be seen as animal-like behaviours.
If you’re lucky, then your sophisticated construction and engineering techniques might be seen as impressive feats of craftsmanship. In a world where robots fasten everything that needs fastening, just driving in a nail or using a screwdriver might be seen as something really fancy, like we’d now see the kinds of stonemasonry that they might have had millennia ago.
But, if your self-image is that of an advanced engineer, and the best you can hope for is to be seen as a quaint old-timey craftsman, that might not be very satisfying.
You’re absolutely correct from an “best practice” standpoint, but only the standards make it into records. That’s the source of our admiration of “old-fashioned know-how.”
Real life experience can’t be catalogued. The index doesn’t have dirt under its nails. Sure, I’d be obsolete and out of place in the day-to-day, but I’d always be ready to coyboy up in a crisis.
In the meantime, I could probably make a decent living creating one-of-a-kind newly handcrafted antiques for the neo-hipsters.
In ye olde days it couldn’t. But, what if the current database of YouTube videos survives? You’d get every non-expert trying everything in any way possible. If books and podcasts survive, you’d have every discussion on why things are done a certain way and not another way. Assuming it all survives, there’d be so much more information to future archaeologists and anthropologists than today. Right now we just dig up a shard of pottery and try to figure things out from whatever we can glean from that pottery.
It would make for a cool movie. The only problem is trying to imagine a really distant future that makes the present look barbaric.
They had fun with that in Demolition Man with the three shells. Star Trek TNG did it in The Neutral Zone where they had a bunch of people from the 20th century including a financier who couldn’t accept the lack of money in the future. But it’s really hard to make a future that’s believable and makes the present look barbaric.
If the records survived, they might not need anything from you, because they’ve already watched it all on video. But, maybe some of them would be interested to see it in person once. Even if we know how warriors fought 3000 years ago, it would still be interesting to see a true expert warrior using their weapons in a way that took a lifetime to master.
If the records didn’t survive, you might be a valuable person to study for a while, but it might quickly get tiring to basically be a sideshow performer, there to delight the people who think of you as this ultra-primitive thing that’s nearly an animal.
I would bet it would be pretty frustrating for most people after a while. You’d have this mental image of yourself as a sophisticated, modern person who was respected by his/her peers. Suddenly, you’d be living in a world where people around you might be struggling to contain their disgust. Things that are normal to you like eating meat or peeing in a toilet might be seen as animal-like behaviours.
If you’re lucky, then your sophisticated construction and engineering techniques might be seen as impressive feats of craftsmanship. In a world where robots fasten everything that needs fastening, just driving in a nail or using a screwdriver might be seen as something really fancy, like we’d now see the kinds of stonemasonry that they might have had millennia ago.
But, if your self-image is that of an advanced engineer, and the best you can hope for is to be seen as a quaint old-timey craftsman, that might not be very satisfying.
You’re absolutely correct from an “best practice” standpoint, but only the standards make it into records. That’s the source of our admiration of “old-fashioned know-how.”
Real life experience can’t be catalogued. The index doesn’t have dirt under its nails. Sure, I’d be obsolete and out of place in the day-to-day, but I’d always be ready to coyboy up in a crisis.
In the meantime, I could probably make a decent living creating one-of-a-kind newly handcrafted antiques for the neo-hipsters.
I think I’d really enjoy our movie, btw.
In ye olde days it couldn’t. But, what if the current database of YouTube videos survives? You’d get every non-expert trying everything in any way possible. If books and podcasts survive, you’d have every discussion on why things are done a certain way and not another way. Assuming it all survives, there’d be so much more information to future archaeologists and anthropologists than today. Right now we just dig up a shard of pottery and try to figure things out from whatever we can glean from that pottery.
It would make for a cool movie. The only problem is trying to imagine a really distant future that makes the present look barbaric.
They had fun with that in Demolition Man with the three shells. Star Trek TNG did it in The Neutral Zone where they had a bunch of people from the 20th century including a financier who couldn’t accept the lack of money in the future. But it’s really hard to make a future that’s believable and makes the present look barbaric.