Has anyone ever considered how we will be remembered in History?
We as in the last 100 years.

When you look back in history, you have inventions, evolutions and discoveries
the discovery of the wheel
the discovery and evolution of agriculture
inventing tools
Alphabet
Paper, papyrus
Pottery
Windmills, watermills
written languages
glasswork
metalworks
gunpowder
......
...
.

My guess (fear) is that when you will look at a timetable of history in 500 years or so (if we still walk the earth)
what will it say???


Using up all Fossil fuels stored inside the earth
filling the ground with byproducts/ waste of nuclear energy
Destroying large parts of the ecosystem
etc.


thoughts anyone.....

So you're going to filter all the bad things about the former centuries of our history and likewise all the good progress recent decades have brought? Okay.

^^^


Good things in the last century:

Flight
Nuclear power
Clean coal
Automobiles
Satellites
Internet
Computers
Rock and roll
Movies
Mobile/cellular phones
Digital imaging
Portable computers
Television
Digital clocks
Piezoelectric systems (commonly found in analog watches, and most high-end hard drives)
Solar cells, and wind turbines

I can do more, but my mind just went blank...

@Bjossi: Of course, History is filled with horrible facts,

colonization africa 60,000,000
Colonization Americas 100,000,000
30yr war 9,000,000+
Taiping 30,000,000+
WW2 50,000,000-70,000,000+

and all very very traumatic to victims and those involved,
What happened never had any long term physical effects (long term as in 3 or 4 generations)
populations did shrink, but like all animals we humans are pretty good at breeding.

What i am referring to is the fact that we are messing with things that effect a much greater span of history.
One example that is very current.
Some radioactive waste will remain hazardous to humans and other creatures for hundreds of thousands of years.

That is a time span of us looking back at cavemen and finding remains of charcoal used when they discovered and used fire.

Where is this waste located?

The only locations that I know of that have that much waste is a secure storage facility that is designed to permanently store those wastes safely...

How much you want to bet that someone is gonna start launching some of that crap into the sun within the next century?

Dang, reading my posts i sound like some sort of treehugger.
Oops, not one of those btw

@BTGbullseye:
yes, there are lost of positive things created that benefit mankind (penicillin, MRI's...)

i just sometimes have this feeling that we mostly use it for games, entertainment, profit.

Ikea cutting down a forest for my new kitchen, closet (still in good shape, but so 2010)
recently they were digging up old cables from 2005-2006 and replacing it, (so i guess i will probable have 50Mbps speeds soon)
GPS while good old maps have worked for more than 500 years.
replace TV 2009 (1920×1080) for 2011 model HD+1 (1921x1081) weeeee!
Using car to get newspaper or something mile away.
companies flying parts, half way around the world because little cheaper
or example milk: from farmer John (a few miles away) shipped to factory A (30 miles) factory B (50) then shipped to C (bottling (330miles) then to store.

Secure storage: we can hardly build things that can last a few hundred years, let alone 100,000years.
Problem with those "secure vessels" leak after 200 years or so that stuff wil get into the soil, water.....



So, when you can't possibly dump any more @location A... Dump it @ location B.
3 problems:
A. Every time we launch another missile we already add crap to location B space,
and it floats around earth (wich is also getting a problem)
B. To send that rocket to the sun (or moon for that matter) we need fuel which we are running out of
C. Rocket to send it there is build from various resources that are also running out.

Well, we can always mine the asteroids, which have no environments to ruin, use them for raw materials, and get infinite energy for the next 5 billion years from the sun.

That is, if we get up off our butts and actually start doing something instead of sitting on our hands cwying about it.

Usually where those good idea's stop.

Problem is were are simply to selfish,
If it was all going to go south within a comprehensible time it would change.

lets say if we didn't have alternate energy sources by 2017 there would be a deadly mixture in the air and we would all die within a week...
Then it would change

But reality it is our grandchildren (or grand-grandchildren who will be in trouble.

It's true humans don't like to change. They usually have to be forced into doing something.

But hey, that's why I'm running for Dictator. You'd be amazed what people can accomplish in one night when the alternative is a firing squad in the morning.

Bwa-ha-ha haa.

Thank you, Cid Myer.

If you build a deathray and don't use it, it's just a huge pile of metal. An inanimate object can't be evil.

im pretty sure some of us will be remembered... ross for instance...

i come from a noble italian family, so my name may be written somewhere, but i doubt anyone will remember me, only my future children and their family...

Technological advancement has gone faster and education has made us smarter than any generation and more rapidly in the history of humanity.

Fire ~400,000 BC(?)
Tools ~8,000 BC(?)
Organized Language ~6,500 BC(?)
Agriculture ~5,000 BC(?)
Wheels ~4,000 BC(?)
Metallurgy ~3,000 BC
Gunpowder ~900 BC
Astronomy ~400 AD
Music ~1400
Machine-Press Typing -1442
Physics ~1700
Steam Power -1771
Auto-Loom -1785
Electrical power -1801
Petroleum power ~1840
Heavier-than-Air Flight -1903
(World War I 1914-1919)
Rocketry -1934
Jet-turbines -1937
(World War II 1939-1945)
Nuclear power -1941
(Cold War 1945-1991)
Genetics -1953
Computers -1970
Internet -1989
Fiber-Optics -2000

Look at that list and take a gander at how quickly things begin to accelerate nearing the past 500 years.
The axiom of our lives and this generation is that we are on the cusp of one of the most rapid, craziest, highly developed peoples that have ever walked the Earth.

Music has been around for millennia, I guess you could say that music first got organized in the 1400's...

Completely agree, and if all this rapid advance at things like
"really" clean energy
curing of various diseases
...

Seems like we are putting more effort in advancements towards things that seem insignificant when we are facing problems mentioned above.

Our computing technology alone is absolutely amazing as it is. Look back 100 or 150 years, and try to imagine how our level of technology would seem to those people then. In my opinion based on the rate that our computing technology is evolving and developing the next 100, or even 50 years, should be very interesting indeed.

History's always going to have its bad points though. Inbetween those advancements in the first post, you miss out numerous crusades, old wars, slavery, oppression, etc. It's too easy to look back and think about the years in the past being 'the golden age' of humanity and that society is far worse today than it was many years ago, but in reality darker things happened in their time as they do in ours. History is fascinating...

i know i missed a lot of wars, crusades, the point i was trying to make is that
right now we are doing things to the environment and making waste that wil have serious consequences on life and the ecosystem for 100,000 years or more.

That's like if we would be stuck with waste, radioactive soil, water that was left by cavemen!!!

I would hope that by the time the planet becomes uninhabitable (or 'if', hopefully) we would be able to travel to other worlds for refuge. Anyway, our current population growth is unsustainable and probably a bigger problem than the other issues I'd say.

Good point, but population growth should settle by itself.
Normally, if a tribe or country does not have enough food, water, settlement to accommodate for their population growth, they will stop growing or become extinct.

Harsh reality: richer countries just buy/take what they don't have or can't produce themselves from less developed countries.
i.e. western countries using up sugar cane and corn from africa
....western countries use it for fuel and africa ends up without food

Bomb southern California and all of Texas. Problem solved.