Preserving History
Peter, Nick and Fraser lament about the amnesia of humanity. How do you communicate with people in the future? How do you makes sure that important things don't get forgotten?
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Transcript
Hello and welcome to the Cognitive Engineering Podcast produced by Tell Me Studios for Aleph Insights. In this series of podcasts we take a look at interesting topics and discuss what we think they tell us about analysis and decision making. I'm Fraser McGruer and I'm here with Peter Coghill and Nick Hare of Aleph Insights and this week we're discussing the discovery
Speaker B:of a bunch of dead archbishops in London. Peter, lead us in. Yeah so in April this year there was an interesting story about the Church of St Mary at Lambeth in London and during some maintenance works the workers discovered a crypt under the church which had been completely forgotten and inside the crypt were some fairly notable burials. I think there were five archbishops and archbishops are obviously quite sort of notable figures in the church and of them there was a Richard Bancroft who chaired the committee that wrote the King James Bible so you know quite notable and John Moore and his wife. And just for the avoidance of doubt they were all dead. They were all dead and they had been dead for some time and then it does so this crypt had been in use for about two to three hundred years for the for burial of significant members of the church and yet only sort of two hundred years ago had been completely forgotten about. In that two hundred years it had fallen out of use, fallen out of record and no one knew it was there until it was rediscovered. Now this got me thinking it's like well isn't it fascinating there's something that was so important to put important people buried there obviously a lot of fuss made about them when they were alive and during their internment. How is it that something that was so important at one time can then be forgotten about to be then rediscovered? Yeah it reminds me of the honours
Speaker C:of Scotland I don't know if you know about that they were also lost for some I think centuries and were unearthed by Sir Walter Scott curiously in the 19th century who basically followed a kind of trail of evidence about where they were these were basically Scottish crown jewels and I think they found them in in a locked box in a storeroom somewhere in Edinburgh Castle but the same thing these are crown jewels we're talking about and they flipping lost them I mean it's really unbelievable yeah you know but it is it's very seems to be a very very common sort of phenomenon this you know lost thingies like those the Fabergé eggs you know which occasionally very occasionally someone you know someone will discover that a Fabergé egg you know at a car boot sale and I mean these are the most valuable almost the most valuable pieces of jewellery ever made you know worth in some cases you know hundreds of millions of pounds and and yet you know they were all dispersed and lost you know during the Russian Revolution and it's not single simple things like
Speaker B: covered by adventurers in the: Speaker C:the Battle of Teutoburg Forest which was a very significant defeat by the uh of the Romans by by um the Germanic uh tribes um was I mean it was an absolutely it was sort of three legions or something which were completely uh completely wiped out so it's a very significant battle it's the first really major loss and prevented the Romans from sort of colonizing Germany and no one knows where it is no one knows where the battle happened you know which is really surprising I think that people have made guesses and unearthed you know what could be uh parts of the battle site but uh but lots of other details about that battle are well known yeah just exactly not the location which is which I just find quite surprising but um so yeah so well so this all got me kind of
Speaker B:thinking um so what various questions but like um how does this sort of forgetting process work I mean there's I think it's probably a complex combination of factors but how is it that things that are so significant to lots of people at one time within a very fairly small number of
Speaker C:generations that are completely lost I think this is a really serious problem actually for for for society because um it really seems to limit our ability uh you know to um to accrue knowledge uh it what we were you know I think I'm old enough now I'm 40 I'm old enough to see people to see mistakes that were made and corrected when I was a kid coming back you know people thinking about them I mean um you know something where people are talking for example people are talking about renationalizing the railways now I uh I don't particularly I don't have a very strong view about that but people are people are seem to have forgotten that British Rail when it was nationalized industry um was a was a joke people people it was you know the numbers of people who are using the trains has gone up very significantly in the last few years the services are undoubtedly much better um now it might be that that would have happened anyway under nationalization but people have forgotten they've forgotten that okay well let's not assume that nationalized industries are all fabulous and efficient because you know I remember when they weren't uh and I just I feel like you see this again and again it's like the rise of the far right across Europe you think no we've tried the far right we had a go at that and it's not good why are people why are people falling for it again you know it's so frustrating so we condemned so historians might
Speaker A:as well give up their jobs right because that's one of the things they said you know history the whole point of it is to not repeat our mistakes yeah well well this is where I think that you know
Speaker B:there's there may be hope in the modern world uh I suspect one of the things that allows things to get forgotten is the the lack of written records we're now we live in a world where we we record so much stuff and we're presented with the new times which is how do we trawl through all this stuff to find what's relevant but in a world where literacy is extremely prevalent compared to it was 50 100 years ago and we record all this stuff and it's all on it's all on either paper or magnetic tapes whatever how can this can this phenomenon still happen or will it be replaced by the same outcome via a different mechanism because just there's so much different data there we can't
Speaker A:we can't work out what's important yeah I mean could Machu Picchu happen again as it were today a whole lost civilization and gets rediscovered hundreds of years later um it feels like no but then the problem becomes a different one which I think is what you're saying which is a processing problem maybe where there's so much data banging around is is it can still get lost somehow I
Speaker B: to: Speaker C:example so of this is being a very significant policy issue uh it's the um uh the the what's it called the waste uh the waste isolation pilot plant pilot plant in New Mexico which has uh is used to store radioactive waste and it's going to be dangerous for 10,000 years and so they have this challenge uh and they've been working on this for you know several decades that's fine there's no rush is there uh but they they have this challenge about how to how to make it safe for future generations um when you remove when you consider that 10,000 years ago you know we were still making cave paintings uh you know what um what can you do to to make sure that in 10 years 10,000 years time people will know to avoid the area I mean you certainly can't use you know written language you can't assume that that's gonna um be the same uh you you know you can't assume that um any of the kind of pictography that we associate with danger is going to be the same uh you know you get you get cults worshiping um you know as death for example and and skulls might be or something like that might be seen as uh you know as something good um so there's all it's a really interesting question um I don't know have you guys got how would you how would you do it I can tell you what the what they're going with but but um what would be your first
Speaker A:reaction well I mean you need some kind of uh trigger which will let's assume you can sort out the tech side of it for a moment that a trigger which for 10,000 years will always be triggered okay um but indiana jones style uh yeah a big rolling ball that squashes you if you try yeah um but um I guess you're what you're saying is something that will always be alarming and and will alarm people I don't know my answer is um as is often the case in one of my favorite episodes of star trek the next generation um this may or may not be relevant but I want to talk about it anyway um where this is a beautiful episode where um the the the crew of the starship enterprise um comes across some sort of beacon out in space and they investigate what it is and there's kind of a flash of blinding light and uh captain picard is um out like a light for the next 10 minutes and during those 10 minutes he's actually somehow he's had the probe sort of go into his brain or something um and he lives out an entire lifetime on this uh in this civilization which is actually slowly being destroyed by um a supernova in sun um and the whole the reason why the civilization does it is because it's the only way they can think of preserving their civilization and then the sorry the um the memory of their civilization is preserved um and and sure enough so he he goes forward and yeah so through through him they've got that memory goes out there so that is my answer is a revolving orbital um so it's it's not the uh it's not the budget solution but yeah uh why not
Speaker B:obviously presumably they're going for they're trying to develop some sort of pictorial language which which which uh appeals to innate sense of danger and yeah I think they're actually going
Speaker C:sort of the next step up actually they're going with menacing looking uh sort of earthworks so great big you know jagged looking earthworks and um which you know appear to radiate radiate out from a central point um to you know to to sort of make you feel feel feel uncomfortable and uh yeah um I mean I think landscaping yeah essentially scary landscaping I mean like personally I think they should just hide it I think the best best thing to do if you at least have control of it is to is to um is to sort of totally level it off and make it look like there was nothing ever there
Speaker B:um there's another solution but I you know bury it deep enough so it's unlikely to be a threat
Speaker A:but here's here's a question is how much should we care about um the people of 10,000 years from now okay because you can make an argument for the next generation and maybe the one after that but you could say well look let's just make it safe for the next thousand years who cares about you
Speaker C:know the 9,000 years after that and so but why I don't see why it's any I mean if you're going to care about we might as well say why should we care about people far away uh we should only care
Speaker B:about people who are nearby yeah careful we'll get the effective altruists on yeah yeah exactly
Speaker A:yeah but doesn't that isn't that what happens and isn't that what happens is that good I mean should should we should we do that you know you know 100 people killed in a plane crash yesterday two of them were british it's that it's that same thing so that question you pose I mean you know but oh we should also be caring about people far away I mean I think the answer is well we don't do we
Speaker C: say listen people of the year: Speaker B:somebody over that period janitor for 10,000 years pass on the message from one janitor to an ex I
Speaker C:guess unless you yeah exactly yeah like the laying on of hands the laying on of warnings yeah uh and their their job you know even in distant times when when the purpose of their job has been totally forgotten they're still there out in the desert you know warning people um there there are actually I mean because there are um you know uh I mean well that's a real life example but there are tsunami stones in Japan which serve a similar purpose and they were built about 100 years ago and they and they bear the message um that uh high dwellings are the peace and harmony of harmony of our descendants remember the calamity of the great tsunamis do not build any homes below this point uh anyway they're all just sort of um sitting there in gradually being overgrown by forests while people are merrily building houses below that point you know so you see you kind of making the stones to use them as foundations so I mean you know there's the question of whether future generations will care uh will listen you know so I mean let's let's flip this around because
Speaker A:a lot of this is perception as well so for example um hey you know a bunch of archbishops very public figures they're really important aren't they right um we think but actually they can't
Speaker C:be that important I mean Richard III buried in a car park he genuinely was significant I mean but you can argue about the archbishops I mean I'm just wondering if there's a reverse of this
Speaker A:where stuff that is not important that actually um or not seemingly important actually becomes sort of you know looms large in in in a national or collective consciousness um and I guess it's not quite the same thing but I mean I'm just thinking am I right in thinking of the diaries of Samuel Pepys um were just for hundreds of years I think they were not um discovered they were not known um and it all it is it's just some musings of some bloke writing stuff down well hold on
Speaker C:one second Samuel Pepys was quite a significant civil servant I mean okay he was but it was a fairly senior it's the equivalent it'd be equivalent of you know a government minister or something okay um but yeah I mean it's true but the musings themselves are quite
Speaker B:yeah exactly that's my point he talks about how his how his how his indigestion is playing out
Speaker C:yeah and groping his I mean as a historical document obviously it's hugely interesting um but yeah I mean I think this is called this is a kind of social taphonomy um you know taphonomy is about the it's it's the understanding of what survives so you know you you may uh form the incorrect impression looking at what things people find at burial sites that our ancestors primarily used metal objects for example but no it's only because wood has mainly rotted away uh you know and and the the so things like uh Pepys' diary uh it isn't you know the case for example that he was the only person who kept a diary or that his diary was remotely significant and we have to bear that in mind I mean it it is of some significance but its primary primary significance is that it survived complete and and documents quite an interesting period in English history um yeah so there's this I think that question of social sort of cultural taphonomy what things survive what what kinds of behavior and beliefs are likely to survive and which
Speaker A:things will get forgotten and all the other Pepys' diaries out there that which that we don't know of or that maybe exist now or not of just have just gone I think that's quite interesting as well um okay I'm slightly lost where do we go what do we where do we where do we go with this
Speaker C: lasted till about till about: Speaker A:it seems like a good idea well I mean I remember some of the criticisms leveled at uh people like Tony Blair and one of his contemporaries at the time was um uh what was the name it was Chirac okay um Chirac was very much no let's not invoi let's not invade uh Iraq and one of the sort of you know a rank he used to pull on him was well look you don't know what it's like to be in a war um neither do you George Bush Mr Draft Dodger um whereas he had actually been in combat I believe in Algeria yeah I think he had been and say look you know you guys don't you know I mean this is all hearsay but the point you're making I'm trying to sort of agree with the point that you're making was that the two people or even the one who said no let's definitely go and do this had really little conception of of what war was like having said that though if we think how close um the second world war was to the first world war and famously the world first world war the what the war to end all wars and everyone said right we're not doing that again that was
Speaker B:pretty horrific arguably had we had we sorted problems out a bit more add in a more adult way after the first world war the second world war wouldn't have happened you can kind of group
Speaker C:them all together as a war in a way that's right so I know some people uh call them phases one and
Speaker A: know in the US um the war of: Speaker C: f Britain you're going to get: Speaker B:reinforced as a sort of narrative of a strong island nation yeah um I mean something that
Speaker A:always strikes me about the UK is that we're actually we're all we are in many ways quite a backward looking nation and very much looking back on our military history and that's something that struck me when I lived in Brazil for example is of course they've got a sense of their own history but they don't they are sort of more literally forward looking um than we are in the UK and and they they just don't have these same kind of um emotional attachments to that side of thing we are quite a militaristic nation here I think um anyway I don't I don't think that's necessarily the right way to go down look look I want to wind up we need to finish there I don't think we've satisfactorily kind of got to the bottom of this or sort of thrashed it out quite as much I'd have liked to have going back to what we were thinking about how does stuff collectively get forgotten I think we've kind of meandered around it a bit um I don't think we've come to any sort of satisfactory conclusion there maybe it's just not possible um so before we wrap up I don't know if you've got 30 seconds um for anything any sort of final bit thing you want
Speaker B:to say Peter well there's there's a few interesting projects many of them not-for-profit um seeking to capture important what is considered now important parts of sort of internet culture for posterity so there's a very interesting one called the long now foundation which is attempting to archive um significant contributions on the internet to in a library that will last 10,000 years to provide to provide future historians a repository of of life now um so I think it's really fascinating and they're exploring complex technical issues about how do you ensure that whatever data you store now is um still usable still accessible in some way in the future given that given that most of the sort of the inverted commas long-term storage media that we use actually perish very quickly within 50 to 100 years so optical media magnetic tapes we just
Speaker A:don't last long and that's before you they you know people in the future figure out how you know when they trigger it with their hand how do they get their six digits into that well exactly or
Speaker B:just making sure that they've got the right version of microsoft of adobe reader to read
Speaker C:yeah i mean because i think actually we can be probably a bit blasé about uh you know the ability of of data to survive because i think we think well we've got so much of it you know that's all going to be there in 100 years right but it isn't unless someone does that unless someone actually puts it it puts it somewhere you know when a website goes down it's gone forever um and and actually i i think we might look back on you know unless we solve this issue we might well look back at the early digital sort of uh revolution and and and it might be something like a kind of dark age i mean because you take uh you know a lot of emails which have totally disappeared you know that actually a lot of you know which are hugely significant um you know uh the kinds of things which would have been reflected as letters or memoranda 100 years ago and have now just totally disappeared and and we and won't exist for historians unless someone is actually actively saving them a friend of mine is you know he's
Speaker A:spent the last couple of years um just every couple of days he sets himself a task of printing off 10 of his old emails you know from his personal account and i think my first personal email account is utterly defunct now and and as you say i there's no way of accessing that data i presume you know um so yeah at least someone's doing it there on a personal level um okay uh we're gonna have to stop there he might be the he might be the next samuel peeps in a thousand years time he might be yeah he is seemingly quite uninteresting so uh yeah well let's let's hope we don't he doesn't listen to this podcast yeah actually he's a very interesting chap um okay all right let's stop there so i've been here with nick hare and peter coghill of aleph insights um i'm this has been the cognitive engineering podcast thank you as always for listening until next time
