The Historical Present
Do you remember the Suez Crisis, Soviet Union, using a phone box, smoking on planes or 9/11?
In this week’s podcast, we discuss the historical present. When does our historical frame of reference start and when does it end? We look at why young people seem to overgeneralise from their experience and whether knowledge and values are generation-specific. We discuss the Beloit College Mindset Lists, the British sitcom Are you Being Served?, and Mini-discs, before finally testing our own subjective timeline from a list of historical events.
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Transcript
it's good as an interesting question is why do we sort of crystallize in our understanding of the world and then don't become blind to new things that are really important to the generations that
Speaker A:follow? Yeah, we fail to notice that something has not been the case for some time. Yeah.
Speaker C:Human nature. But I think the the opposite is true as well, right? Like your point about Hungary having always been a NATO member. It's self evident that it hasn't always been a NATO member. So why is it that someone for whom it has always been a NATO member for their whole life wouldn't think, oh, yeah, there must have been a time when it wasn't. Yeah, it goes both
Speaker B:ways. That's my slight beef with these lists is that they do assume a huge amount of naivety in they massively generalize. They're there to try and paint us the straw man trope of these students that they're going to be coming in in any given intake. So they hugely generalize. But they also assume a lot of naivety. I read a few of these lists and I thought I don't quite get where that one's going. Because yes, anyone with half brain would go, this is true now, but there's no reason why it would necessarily be have been true in the past. I think the most informative was I came up with many taxonomy, the types of things in the list. The most informative ones are the kind of cultural development ones, the technology development ones, and the ones which are sort of points of points in history, like the release of film or a particular event. They're the most useful because they sort of they provide you with that historical framework on which people, their perception of their part of the historical framework informs their opinions rather than the sort of statement of some sort of perceived or expected opinion about something that actually is a bit of a straw man that anyone with half brain wouldn't actually have that opinion. I think it's interesting that you raise that as well,
Speaker C: ave been for me, the class of: Speaker B:plane tickets are. The quality of editorial has gone down from the original concept.
Speaker A:Yeah, I mean, there is and there's also this assumption. I mean, fair enough, this is what it's designed for, but that the responsibility is all on the professors to sort of get down with the kids. And maybe it's, you know, maybe if you think... I don't think they say get down with the kids anymore, Nick. If you think that there's never been record players, it's your job to work out that there were. You know, as Tom was saying, part of maturity is sort of actually learning about things that happened before you were born. I feel like we're moaning about millennials again. No, no, because millennials are in their 40s. See, you're all confused. You think young people are millennials, they're not. Millennials are really old. I feel like we're moaning about young people.
Speaker C:Well, we're not. I actually, I think it's almost the opposite. For me, I think... Such a young people person. We're moaning about old people, we're moaning about boomers. Just go, no, it's not that, it's this. The things like, you know, students now would not have been around for 9-11. I think that's an interesting thing that actually professors should take into account when they're teaching, because you may need to explain more of the context around it and how people reacted to it and so on. That's almost like a useful thing to know for teaching. Whereas...
Speaker A:I disagree about taking that into account if we're talking about a university class, but I do think they need to be taught it, obviously, but at school, not at university. But anyway, keep going.
Speaker C: back in the early list in the: Speaker B:Yeah. I'm with Tom. I think there's the list of fun. How useful they are is questionable. Because I think in the learning setting that they're designed for use, the professors should assume one thing really, and that's the willingness and a thirst to learn on their students. If you said, oh, well, you used the record player as an analogy for something, and they'd never heard of one, you'd expect someone to stick up their hand or Google it, right? And work out for themselves what a record player is and why that is a culturally relevant
Speaker C:analogy for the thing you're talking about. Students now have always been able to Google things.
Speaker A:I wonder if the students themselves were consulted on these lists as they were compiled, or was it just a bunch of old professors putting it all together and going, oh, the kids need to know about this, and they didn't check first? There's a good question, because they won't know what should be on that list. That's the premise of this, is that we're trying to map things that are, let's say, quite strongly in our sort of knowledge domain, and which are very salient, and which we can't imagine someone not knowing, that are mysteriously absent from a young person's. But we don't know that. We haven't noticed that this has dropped off the kind of collective cultural map of young people. And it's not too dissimilar to actually when you've got someone from a totally different culture, and you're trying to have a conversation with them about something, I don't know, like a famous TV celebrity or some political institution or something. You realise, okay, they don't actually really know what the House of Commons is or something, and you're like, okay. Presumptive knowledge. Yeah. Is that the technical term for? I don't know. I just made it up, but I think it should be. Yeah, that sense of like, okay, these are things that are just shared cultural touchstones, but we're trying to work out what's missing from one person's and present in mine. Right. But also, potentially, this sort of speaks volumes about the institution itself, where that institution is located, for example, in this particular example that we're talking about. Because also, I don't know if the same university has a list of things that someone from another country might need to know. They've just looked at it in terms of generations.
Speaker B:Or things that you should know that your professors might call on when they're giving their lectures. Yeah, exactly. How can you help your lecturer out?
Speaker A:Yeah, yeah. And also, but also the cultural thing. I remember chatting with some Syrians a few months ago. I think I was in Poland. And I was talking to them about Northern Ireland for some reason. I can't remember why. And they were just absolutely fascinated and astonished by this whole Catholic-Protestant thing. And they said, what? So Christians aren't just Christians? And I say, yeah, no, it's like- You know Sunnis and Shias. Right. And that's exactly how I explained it. And he was like, oh, okay, that's interesting. Anyway, I digress.
Speaker B:We're going back to the other lists. I thought it'd be rather fun to extend the list back in time. That would be really quite a useful repository. Well, it would. And also-
Speaker A:That might be something we should do. I've got some theories that I want to throw out. So I definitely want to hear these theories. Because also, a pace of change is an interesting thing and things like that. But Nick, let's hear your- Yeah, so my first point, and I think this is, okay, so we've got these two things. Firstly, why do we- Well, actually, they boil down to the same thing. The question one is, why do we sort of not realise that something's changed or that something which we think is recent was actually quite a long time ago and we can't assume young people have heard? And the same thing, I think, which is what Tom mentioned, was why is it that sort of young people over-generalise from their experience? And perhaps might naturally assume that the past was more similar to the present than in fact it is. Mm-hmm. So I think there's this aspect that when you have lived through something, it acquires a huge amount of connotations and richness, right, that it's really hard to communicate through sort of telling something. So an example might be something like Tom is aware that people didn't used to have mobile phones. You're aware of that, right? Well, I am now. And you're aware that in the 90s when people wanted to meet up at a pub, they couldn't just sort of ring up each other on a phone.
Speaker C:I wasn't allowed into pubs in the 90s.
Speaker A:No, you weren't. But the point is that you're aware that people used to still nevertheless somehow meet up without mobile phones. You know that, but you've never done it. I assume it was like Brownian motion. Yeah, people just randomly appeared. But the point is that you can sort of imagine what you think it was like making a social arrangement without mobile phones, but you're probably wrong on all kinds of very small details, right? And then there's all kinds of things that you think, well, okay, so how did we remember people's phone numbers? We had a phone book and we wrote people's numbers in it. How did we make a phone call? Well, there were phone boxes that you could use, you know, and what did you need to do to use a phone box? You had to have, you know, 10p or a phone card. What's a phone card? Well, all of this stuff that we know because we lived through it and which the concept of, you know, let's say making a phone call. Yeah, and how do you pay for it without actually paying, by the way, is another one. Well, we won't get onto more of your criminal behavior from the past. We've covered that already on a different podcast. But the point is that there's such a rich tapestry of experience tied into that. And it is impossible to communicate that to someone. You just can't. You can tell someone about it, but it's going to lack kind of depth. So that's why I think there's this problem of being able to try and pass that knowledge on. Well, it's just really, really hard because there's so much embedded in that concept. But the other one is that I think... And why it's so emotive as well, maybe. Sorry, keep going. Well, the other point I'd make is that it's also a problem that we don't actually, haven't really evolved to have to deal with in that change is very, would have been very rare for in the evolutionary environment. You know, you can spend the first 10, 15 years learning how the world works, where the water sources are, where the antelope live. And once you've got the hang of that, that's it, you're fully functioning. You don't need to keep learning about the world beyond a certain amount of time. The fact that we kind of have to, and it's really changed a lot. And there's new, all the facts have changed. It's not something we kind of naturally grown up with. Exactly. It was like that for your great-grandfather, and it will be like that for your great-grandson as well. That kind of thing, maybe. Great. Tom, anything to add at this point?
Speaker C: . And looking at the Class of: Speaker A:The noble young person.
Speaker C:Yeah, exactly. And other points on here are things like they've always lived in cyberspace, addicted to a new generation of electronic narcotics. They're these imagined cultural markers that are not really actually based on any empirical evidence.
Speaker B:Maybe an exercise for listeners interested in looking up these lists, but some of the lists, I remember there's a big block of text that describes what it is for. And I think it describes how it was created. I didn't actually read any of them, I just skipped straight to the list. But it felt like when I scanned through some of them that there was a different, the way that the list had been formulated was different. So the early lists felt like it was just a bunch of professors in a room at the pub, like thinking up facts that people wouldn't necessarily know. Yeah, some genuinely sort of helpful. Looking on the history timeline and going, yep, they wouldn't know that they would never have heard of this. The later, the latter ones feel they're more like they've been some sort of workshop with the students who were sort of joining or would have left that were leaving that year or had just joined or something to say, what are the people immediately behind you? What do they know and care about? Right. And it was they sort of did a bit of crowdsourcing and that's where you get some of this young person bullshit coming in. Did they hire as young people they could find? Yeah, yeah. So they went lazy and they said rather doing it themselves and seeing as an opportunity to gen up on the generations that they're going to be teaching. They went, OK, just throw, put post-its on this board and we'll take the best ones and take them for this. But also because
Speaker A:some of the stuff there starts to sound massively twee and annoying, right? Which, so maybe, yeah,
Speaker C:they did get the younger people to do it because young people are tweeing annoying. Massively
Speaker A:tweeing annoying. Have you met old people? That reads to me like someone in their late 20s who thinks they're still with it, has written it. I think we missed out on a massive. Hey, I'm in my late 20s. Yeah, but you don't think you're with it. I think we're not. But by the way, I just noticed he's wearing an Echo and the Bunnymen t-shirt. Echo and the Bunnymen have never existed. Well, Tom was telling me all about how much he loves Are You Being Served?
Speaker C:Yeah, you're a bit of a. Whereas kids these days, they're just addicted to electronic narcotics. Yeah. And Are You Being Served? Yeah. But I think your point about the changing makeup or changing process of making this is interesting because they state that it was created as a reminder to faculty to be aware of dated references. I would say it's not that anymore. No, I think probably what happens is the
Speaker B:sort of second or last year students, they go, give us a list of all the outdated references that your people have used. And that's a big best way of doing it. But that doesn't explain where
Speaker C:these sort of pseudo philosophical statements about. Well, they'd be pretentious people.
Speaker A: y tell the difference between: Speaker C:I've, I've heard the phrase, but I don't really know anything about it. So I wouldn't want to
Speaker A: years ago. So what?: Speaker C: I think it was: Speaker A: years ago. You reckon that's: Speaker C: s. So I'm gonna say, like,: Speaker A:Okay. And, um, what about, uh, Roy Jenkins getting elected as the SDP leader, Tom? Ooh. Ooh. So that is- So what's your- It's gonna be 80, because he wasn't the first. Oh, you're reasoning again. Sorry. So I'm gonna say 86. 86. I think it was earlier than that, but I'll say 86.
Speaker C:I'm just going on the general feeling that I have of the SDP, which is, yeah, mid-80s. Maybe, I'd say maybe, like, 84.
Speaker A: r. But, um, so my, in theory,: Speaker C:I'd say that's well out of that window for me. I was going to guess earlier, because it feels like a long time ago.
Speaker A: ,: Speaker B:Following on from Nick's miniature social study there, which wasn't very nice. Inconclusive. Inconclusive, like any given good, any good social studies experiment. Uh, I think they've missed, they've missed an opportunity with these lists. So they, if they just standardised the way the list was produced. So if it started off with just being professors, it should always have been just professors. Um, but they should have done a parallel list, which was done by the students. Like what the, what the student, the outdated references that the professors were using, doing them or what the students rather, what the students thought were important references that the professors might not know. If they run those two, if they every year being produced in complete isolation, and they'd give you a really interesting sort of comparison between the different perceptions. Yeah. Of lots of things.
Speaker A:Actually, then. That would be good. The student lists from 20 years ago could gradually become the. Well, the professor lists.
Speaker B:You do a longitudinal comparison. Were they correct? You know, were they correct about what was significant?
Speaker C:I also think that longitudinal comparison would be interesting for seeing how fast different things fade. Yes.
Speaker B:I mean, it would. What a powerful data set that would be.
Speaker C:Very slowly, right? Yeah. Mini disks. Does anyone really remember mini disks?
Speaker A: ent to war for nine months in: Speaker B:That's a good one.
Speaker A:Yeah, but in fact, even at the time, I think it was not universally accepted. And there was quite a lot of people. They thought it was something that needed to change. I'd say the thing that I think probably most surprising was that when I was a kid, there was a smoking carriage on the tube. I'd say that one. That one is like so much wrongness in there by today's standards. But when I was a kid, you could smoke anywhere on the tube, I think.
Speaker B:So, yeah, along those lines. But Holden, is that surprising?
Speaker A: s. And up until I think about: Speaker C:I think that would be surprising in future. For me, what I've always found more surprising, because at least a carriage is sealed off. I've always found it surprising that planes used to have a smoking side. Yeah. And a non-smoking side. There was like a meter gap between you and the smokers. It was usually actually at the back.
Speaker A:It was the tail end, which is actually also, I think, the safest place.
Speaker B:Yeah, but it was also the most fun place, quite frankly. They're just sort of offsetting the risk. Yeah, exactly. They're doing a service. Yeah. A socialist service. Yeah. Peter, you were going to say something or? Well, along the healthy things. So I remember when they sold leaded petrol, which is crazy considering we knew for so long that it was really, really bad for people. Yeah.
Speaker C:Engine knocking, permanent brain damage, which is really worse.
Speaker A:Was it bad for the environment for some reason as well? Or was it just people? Not really. It was the environment.
Speaker B:It's just young and particularly children. Really bad for developing brains. Then the other weird thing is, now this might speak to the kind of town that I grew up in rather than anything else. You couldn't get coffee to go. It was not a thing. There were coffee shops and tea rooms and things, but it wasn't like now where every coffee shop will give you a coffee to go.
Speaker A:Yeah, that's a really good one. That's one of those good everyday life things that you wouldn't think to mention. Yeah. Yeah. I like that one. Yeah. I'm trying to think of something, but I can't really. It just makes you sound like a Daily Mail reader, which is just the extent that kids were allowed to just go off and do stuff. No, that's a cliche. You're not allowed that. I know, but it's true though. It's not. I don't think it's necessarily. I grew up in London and I wasn't allowed to just go off and do stuff. Yeah, but London, sad to say, is not the majority of the UK. So in the majority of the UK, you were allowed to just go off and do stuff. Plus also, I'm younger than you. And so maybe. Sorry, I'm older than you. I'm older than you. Maybe in London, five, 10 years before you did. But yeah, I don't think mine's a very good example. However, one I do have for the future, though, and I might have mentioned this before, is the fact that we drive cars ourselves. Yeah. I think 20 years from now, people go, what? And I think my kids 10, 20 years from now go, do you remember when our dad used to drive the car himself? You know, and had all those accidents. Still does. Yeah. Yeah. Tom, was there something, anything? What are you going to bequeath to the next? It was your insight for the next generation.
Speaker C:I think one that might become more kind of, not like unknown, but might seem very different in the future is buying things physically. Whereas, you know, now you download an ebook, you download music. I mean, nowadays, you don't even do that. You stream music or films or whatever. You download a computer game. Whereas before, you know, having stacks and stacks of DVDs or PC games or whatever. Yeah. That would be a bit alien.
Speaker B:Having to have a good file naming convention to organize your life.
Speaker A:Oh, not this again.
Speaker B:You will always need that, Peter. Computers can't do it. It's only when you're in the paradigm of dealing with files. But most people aren't in their day-to-day lives. They're just using an app. They just go to the app that's doing that one thing.
Speaker A:Yeah. And the necessity of CD racks, things like that. We've got to stop there. All right, that was fun. Thank you, as always, for joining us on the Cognitive Engineering Podcast. I'm Fraser McGruer. We've been here with Tom Spence, Peter Coghill, and Nick Hare of Aleph Insights. Until next time, goodbye.
