🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1996Jan13.210601.111812@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu>,
hoopes@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu (John Hoopes) wrote:
>> As an archaeologist who regularly deals with human cultural 
>> phenomena over broad spans of time (500 years is not a daunting 
>> chunk), I am far more optimistic about our ability to formulate a 
>> pretty good idea of what things will be like a thousand years in the
>> future.  

I doubt it - because this ability depends on *which* 
500 years. Some cultures change faster than others.
Also, some cultural phenomena change at a more or 
less uniform rate - but
others accelerate quasi-exponentially.

In their early stages, these two groups of phenomena cannot
be distinguished: an exponential curve is sluggish at first,
and permits linear extrapolation; but then it explodes!

I doubt that any 19th century
archaeologist excavating 14-th
century ruins - or even his own 19th century's
garbage heaps - could have predicted, say, this
Internet...

Of course, changes of this magnitude
occurred before, they just took
longer. Could a preliterate 
have predicted writing? 
He'd have to invent it first!

Because so many trends are approaching the
explosion phase, probably  no one - archaeologist or
not - can have any accurate idea even of year 
2,300 AD, let alone 3,000 AD. 

Environmentalists, btw, see *one* of these 
discontinuities:
we can't grow very much more without greatly
impacting - smashing or transforming - what's
left of the natural global environment.
They imagine this to be a tragedy,
not a triumph (like a chick hatching from its
egg) - but in either case, it's a qualitative
leap. But it is not the only, nor the most interesting,
qualitative transformation looming ahead. 
E.g., biological human nature is likely
to begin changing soon, with bioengineering, and
with cyborg technology; and it
is likely not to change in just one direction:
mankind will split into many species, complementary
or competing. 

If human nature itself changes,
then, a fortiori, the cultural landscape
is likely to change so as to be unrecognizable,
not even understandable, to a modern
person, archaeologist or not. I agree, however,
that an archaeologist or a historian or a cultural
anthropologist has an advantage here, because his
imagination has been expanded through contact
with different cultures.