The future of the past and the past of the future

Today is the 50th anniversary of the first broadcast of the Jetsons. It's always fascinating to look at how the people in the past used to imagine the future would be like, and see how different their extrapolations were to how things actually turned out. There are certainly technologies and societal changes that have happened in the last 50 years that would have been impossible to predict.

Equally fascinating, I think, is to imagine how people in the future will think of our present. Okay, it's a rather different problem in that there will (hopefully!) be actual historical records of what life today is like (in fact, our present is probably the most well-documented historical period ever). Still, we surely have misconceptions today about what life was like in the past, and it's interesting to wonder what misconceptions the people of the future will have about us. What technologies that have yet to be invented will be so ubiquitous and game-changing that people will have real trouble imagining what life was like without them? What changes will happen to society which will make today seem unfathomably alien? Given enough time, I'm sure such changes are inevitable, so (despite the excellent records) I think it would be completely unsurprising if the people of tomorrow have some serious misconceptions about the people of today (especially amongst those who don't study the past for a living).

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