Saving the Past for the Future

They say that history always repeats itself. But, what if we are losing our history? How can that be with all the data floating around. Some people commemorate loved ones, both relatives and pets with photos and paintings. Dottie Dowling (see Facebook page) does wonderful photos, especially of animals and Carol McClees, carolsfineart.com,  is frequently commissioned to paint people’s pets so they have a memory of them.

Preserving Books

We are generating more data than at any time in history, but much of it is so ephemeral. Many older books are much more durable than modern books. That is because early books were written on parchment or printed on linen paper or things like that which were very stable. Then they found that you could make paper from wood pulp which was much cheaper. However, it naturally has acid in it unless it is specially treated to be neutral. This causes the paper to degrade over time. So libraries are actually having more trouble preserving some of the early books printed on wood pulp based paper whereas they are having minimal trouble preserving the earlier books printed on other materials.

Preserving Newspapers

Then there are the newspapers. They are printed on a cheap grade of paper, (with the catchy name of newsprint) that are not intended to last since it is expected that they will be read and discarded in a day or two. Libraries and museums that have newspaper collections are having even more trouble preserving these. Many are save by microfilming or now digitizing.

Preserving Film

The earliest films were made with a nitrate base which is very flamable and not very stable. So there is a race on to copy these old films onto or into other media, whether that be newer stable film or digitized. It would be a shame to lose these old films because they give us a visual glimpse into another time.

Preserving Correspondence

Before there were telephones and email and twitter, people wrote letters to each other. These letters give us great insight in historical figures and also into what was happening during different historical periods. Today it is rare for people to write letters. Historians are losing this valuable tool to be able to look back in time. The late 1900s and on into the 2000s, there will be much less that people leave behind. Even if emails are saved, the same care and thought does not go into them.

Preserving Computer Files

We may be compounding the problem by putting so much information online. As file formats change, it is already difficult to go back and read some old file formats, or old floppy disks. And that is only 10 or 20 years ago, not 100 or 200 years ago. What happens if this data is corrupted or there is an electromagnetic pulse that fries the computers the data is on? Will it be properly backed up? It will be interesting in the future to look back and see if this era with so much data floating around is surprisingly bereft of information about it.

Bad Future Predictions

The Huffington Post had a funny article about predictions of the future that didn’t quite work out.

1859 – People that Edwin Drake knew thought he was bonkers for trying to drill in the Earth to find oil. Whales were plentiful and would do just fine.

1873 – The Queen’s surgeon said that it would be crazy to do surgery on chest, abdomen and brain and that no one would ever do such an inhumane thing.

1878 – An Oxford professor thought the electric light was a gimmick for the grand Paris Exhibition and that it would fade away and never be heard of again.

1883 – Of all people, someone as intelligent and learned as Lord Kelvin thought that x-rays were a hoax.

1888 – Possibly his proof was that no one had so far been successful but a professor Joseph Le Conte felt that this proved that a self propelled flying machine was impossible.  Good think most inventors don’t listen to this kind of logic.

1903 – A bank president told Henry Ford’s attorney not to invest in Ford Motor Company because cars were a fad and we would always use horses.

1912 – The Syracuse Herald was a bit too fast with their reporting on the Titanic. They claimed that all passengers had been saved and the ship was damaged but making its way to Halifax. Wrong!

1919 – Hall of fame baseball player, Tris Speaker, said it was a supremely dumb idea to convert Babe Ruth from the best left handed pitcher in all of baseball to a right fielder. However, the Babe went on to hold the record for the most home runs in one year for 34 years and the most career home runs record for 39 years.

1920 – The New York Times decided that a rocket would never be able to get out of Earth’s atmosphere. Maybe their descendants were the ones who said the moon walk was a hoax staged on a Hollywood set.

1944 – A modeling agency told Marilyn Monroe that she should get a secretarial job or get married.

1948 – A radio pioneer declared that TV was just a “flash in the pan”

1955 – Variety magazine proclaimed that Rock n Roll would disappear by June of that year.

2005 – And of course since this was in the Huffington Post, the last is that the LA Weekly said when the Huffington Post was launched that it would not survive.

 

History of Predicting the Future

Many people have tried to predict the future. It seems deeply embedded in various religions. Jesus was part of a group predicting the apocalypse. However the meaning of the word has changed. It originally meant a revelation of God’s will rather than the end of the world as it has come to mean now.

Jewish Predictions

Jewish belief in the apocalypse is that the current world is ruled by evil and that a Messiah will come and deliver believers to a new era that will by ruled by God. Predictions of when the Messiah would come were discouraged so that people wouldn’t lose their belief if the prediction was wrong. We have been waiting 2,000 years.

There have been many false predictions over the years. You would think that people would look at the track record and avoid making predictions of the end of the world. Here are some of the ones.

The final battle was going to be fought in the year 66-70 as the Jews battled the Romans. Then Hilary Poitiers said it would end in 365 and Martin of Tours said it would happen before the year 400.

Christian predictions

Then the year 500, 793 and 800 and a waffle by Gregory of Tours saying 799-806. Have you noticed that a lot of the predictions are for turn of the century and turn of the millennium. They probably didn’t stop to think that telling time in this way was a human construct and there was nothing special about these dates.

Then there was 848, 992-5 by an assortment of Christians, January 1, 1000 and 1033. We skip the 1100s and the end of the world predictions start up again in the 1200s. and 1300s, skip the 1400s and then more in the 1500s. (There might have been some in the 1100s and 1400s but they weren’t mentioned in the article we read.

The Demise Gets More Frequent

There were many predictions of the end of the world in the 1500, 1600s, 1700s and 1800s. Some reworked their calculations when the world didn’t end after the first date they predicted. Cotton Mather tried 3 times. It is not clear if the increase was because with a greater population and therefore more people who might make predictions or that historical recordation improved and we just will never know the true extend of predictions in earlier times.

Aliens enter the picture

In the 1900s the bad predictions did not let up. Jeane Dixon got this one wrong. Unfortunately for Jim Jones’ followers in Guyana, Jim Jones decided not to wait for the apocalypse and created his own. Then Charles Manson murdered people to start a race war that would create an apocalypse. The Heaven’s Gate Cult believed an alien spacecraft was in the shadow of Halley’s comet and we were supposed to die as it came by so that our souls could get to the spacecraft. Thirty nine of them committed suicide so they could get to the spaceship.

And the hits just keep on coming. It seems like they are getting more frequent. When will people learn?

 

More on Cars

Are we in for a future of the Jetsons with flying cars? Or as mentioned in a prior post, most people not owning cars, but instead, doing taxis, limo rental, uber type services and the like. Will the cars drive themselves or will we still be at the wheel?

Flying Cars Planned

Well, there are actually some cars that can fly. The problem is the cost. They will probably never be a main stream item. However, one company Terrafugia is designing a flying car they call the TF-X. It uses technology that is already available and would fly at 200 mph and hold 4 people. No pilot’s license would be needed because it would fly itself. Terrafugia says it will probably be ready in 10 years. They have a model that will need a pilot’s license and is close to passing FAA approval and could be ready for sale in one to two years.

There is also a prototype called the AeroMobile. They are on version 3.0 and it is almost ready to be sold as well. It uses regular gasoline so it can be driven into any gas station to refuel.

Is it a Car or a Technology Product?

USA Today had an article where they felt self driving cars are in the future and the near future will be more tech upgrades to cars. At first the article made it sound like automated cars might not happen but later in the article it intimated it might happen in 10 years or so. That seems pretty close. They point out how much technology is going into cars these days and how a lot of tech companies have increasing automotive sales.

They feel like it will take a while because to have self driving cars, it is not like it is on a test track. They have to interact with self driving cars from other manufacturers. Then there is the question of how much will insurance be and also getting the legislation passed to allow it. Not things that will happen overnight.

Another reason it will take a while is that the car industry operates on a different schedule. The tech industry often works on a 6 month time frame, but new car models typically take 5 years to roll out.

Who Makes the Money?

The article says that people like to drive, but we think that those people will be a minority. We do agree though that the car companies may have to worry more about the tech companies like Google. They may come up with their own cars, but they also may change the power structure and where most of the profits go. It may be that the tech companies walk away with most of the profits from cars and the car companies don’t make that much because their part is more commodotized.

The Future is More of the Past

I just had my eyes opened. I just found some articles that my father had sent me in  1987. I had never gotten around to reading them at the time and felt guilty about throwing them away without looking at them.

Finally, in 2015 I unburied them and looked through them. It was very interesting and made me question even more whether I wanted to trust what advice people had to give about the stock market and the economy.

Crash of 1987

The articles talk about the stock market crash of 1987 and what were the causes and what should people do. A number of people were comparing the downturn to 1929 which in retrospect is a severely overblown reaction.

Some people felt that modern safeguards would prevent a meltdown to the 1929 levels. Between Social Security, unemployment insurance and an active Federal Reserve, many felt that they would prevent a complete 1929 style meltdown. At the time they were written, the downturn seemed to be only in the stock market and not in the general economy.

Worse than 1929?

One analyst felt that these only treated the symptoms and not the underlying causes. He felt that 1987 might be even worse than 1929. He said in both cases that excessive world wide debt and a contracting economy had been the cause of the crash.

He also said that legislators had gone overboard after the 1929 crash and there was too much New Deal social legislation and also business regulation. He felt that this was having a major drag on the economy. Sounds like the Republicans of 2015. Not much has changed.

Back to the Future

Another article said that people got too caught up in the euphoria of the stock market rise and that they didn’t pay attention to the warning signs. That sounds like what happens at any market peak to me. They said that people didn’t pay attention to low earning yields and dividends on stocks and figured that corporate earnings would increase and yields along with it.

Other problems were inflationary expectations which were much higher back then than they are now. Also there was a stalemate between Congress and the President. Perhaps not the inflation (although people keep beating that drum) it sounds a lot like today doesn’t it?

At least I didn’t read anything about people jumping out of windows in 1987 the way some did in 1929. There were a number of comments about people who had bought on margin and were facing margin calls. This was much worse in 1929 because there were fewer safeguards to keep people out of trouble back then. In 1929, everyone from tycoons to blue collar workers was buying on margin since it seemed like the joy ride would never end.